


Lizbob Supernatural Meta (season 13)

by lizbobjones



Series: Lizbob Supernatural Meta Collection [15]
Category: Supernatural
Genre: Archived From Tumblr, Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Fanwork Research & Reference Guides, Meta, Meta Essay, Non Fiction, archived from elizabethrobertajones blog
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-15
Updated: 2018-12-15
Packaged: 2019-09-19 15:00:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 21
Words: 25,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17003859
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizbobjones/pseuds/lizbobjones





	1. Why We Like Jack

> **Anonymous**  asked:
> 
> I read your watch notes and I couldn't agree more with basically everything you said. Whatever witchcraft Dabb worked to make even reluctant parts of fandom (including me) fall for Jack in, like, the fastest amount of screentime . . . I couldn't help thinking through the whole thing just how much it's going to hurt when he goes dark. However that happens.

* * *

Yeah, in my notes I was not actually joking about the stoner movie lolz bait and switch for Jack being evil… Dabb picked a random harmless fun mood to hit, nailed it with Clark and Jack, even before we could be sure that was what was happening, and after leaving us to hang on Jack saying “I’m hungry” in that very “Amara kept saying that and then eating people but Clark just thinks Jack has the munchies” mood-split cliffhanger, landed it on the side of “munchies” and basically sealed in one move that Jack was harmless and adorable… I mean to me, from the moment we saw him eating candy and giggling it’s clear what the intent is with him, and I don’t think anyone but Dean will have ambiguity about his heart any more, or the bad guys who want to use him without asking him what he is. (Sorry, I know you said you read them but just repeating for people who didn’t.)

I do still think that Jack will probably have to go dark at some point but I’m already completely on his side and assume it will be sympathetic and he’ll be scared and confused and probably dealing with a massive choice he’s not equipped to make yet and maybe think he’s doing things for the right reasons or whatever. He IS a Cas mirror, setting his compass by Cas, and Cas is such a fuck up about these things historically, and he is a Sam mirror and Sam’s such a fuck up about these things historically, and he’s a Dean mirror and that’s more complicated but Dean has historically fucked these things up and at the very least they gave him a “turn” to be the fuck up with the Mark of Cain storyline. :P 

So basically as soon as he said Cas was his father and everything finished falling into place which themes Jack was representing now, I think the other reason I became hysterically protective over him and his squishy nougat centre is because that bad turn is coming but oh no how horrible it’s been for our 3 leads, and now Jack’s innocent, pure core is going to have to take some heavy damage for him to to learn and grow because he’s a philosophical experiment, in the writing… And dangit, Dabb, it IS witchcraft, because I was already feeling fond of Jack, but it’s not just that he aligned himself with Cas and this is Cas girl protectiveness transferring over to him… It’s everything he represents, and knowing how awful this show is, and how beautifully naive Jack is… 

I think the other thing is that a lot of it is in the performance - they could have really fucked it up by casting someone who could do a few creepy smiles, the scary faces when he attacks them - the smirk we went into hiatus on - but if they couldn’t be innocent and sweet and realistically portray being a brand new person in a way that wasn’t hammy or ridiculous or bumbling… He really sold Jack’s mannerisms (or lack of them), and partly because he has great chemistry with Jared, that scene where he’s in the cell with him and that whole movement where he earnestly moves to sit cross-legged in front of Sam and Sam flinches back but Jack’s just unaware and harmless and still *at the same time* threatening and large and genuinely intimidating because of his sheer *aura* of this new personality soaking up everything around it with child-like curiosity… And Sam doesn’t know what that is yet and Jack is unaware of how he comes across… And that’s visible in his behaviour. It’s *really good* acting to drop into the mindset of someone who’s absolutely hours old NEW at everything. So absolute kudos to Alex and to whoever found him :P I can really see him having the potential to be everything we do and don’t want him to be in just one episode of interactions.

So, yeah. I hope no one thinks it’s hypocritical of people to suddenly fall for Jack now because I’ve spent the summer withholding judgement because I knew he’d be more than that scary face they left us with, but that they also DID leave us with a scary face and obviously none of us could call how long they’d leave us thinking he was genuinely threatening and if he’d be bad first and need cajoling back or if when someone tried it he’d turn around and only halfway into his first episode be like nah mate me dad’s Castiel, with the decision only held off being revealed as long as it was to build some tension and get us guessing about who and what Jack is going to be. 

I mean, in 12x19 if you weren’t determined to hate him already for some reason, it was pretty clear he had a good core even before he MET Cas because he hears Cas’s speech and *decides* from that that he’s choosing Cas, which means he already knew Dagon was bad and Cas’s expressed morality was the real guide he needed to be what he wanted to be. To me it was really just a matter of how much he needed to REMEMBER that and the fake out was a great way to do that because I was thinking he’d have to be reminded he picked Cas and that maybe he was just following a random signal from Lucifer without understanding it, but his core was still the baby that decided it needed Cas… And setting it up as a bait and switch “no he just likes nougat” put so much tension into Jack’s decision with all this weight that this was resolved as he said Cas was his father. 

(I mean I suppose the general crack post mood is basically because we all love Cas and so as soon as Jack says he does too the entire fandom flocks around him to be his new grandparents, but I think this was the unstated underlying tension which made it work SO effectively because I think we were all waiting to see where and how Jack would be good, but then they did it in a 2-part fake out spectacular to prove his heart was absolutely good that resolved it first hilariously and then emotionally and now Jack is our squishy and we shall call him squishy.)


	2. Dean Is Not Okay In 13x01

> **Anonymous**  asked:
> 
> If it weren't for Jack, I don't think Dean would stay.. here? He's stunned, he lost everything and the only thing keeping him going is to kill this evil thing. He's bringing Jack back to the bunker because the only people he can hurt is them, he's at a point were he doesn't care about himself or Sam anymore, but there's a thing to kill.. the thing that took everything away from him :(

* * *

**[elizabethrobertajones](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/166373850963/if-it-werent-for-jack-i-dont-think-dean-would)**  answered:

Yeah he was essentially assuming he’s taking Jack back to the Bunker to kill or be killed and he’s okay with that. It’s just his job >.>

Honestly in all my years of watching the show I’ve never, ever truly thought Dean was able to walk away from hunting even when it got REALLY bad, there wasn’t some part of himself defined by what he did. Even in 10x22, arguably the episode that shows him at the absolute worst he ever was, he gloats that he kills gods, in a horrible corruption of what normally makes Dean good and enthusiastic about the job.

All I see at the moment in my mind’s eye when I visualise Dean is that action figure from 9x07 melting in the fire going “I clobber eeeviillll” which was at the start of the Dean Deconstruction project - the part of Dean that saw himself as a superhero. *But they didn’t kill that part off in season 9 or 10* Not, like… fully. Not the part that enjoys the job even on some perverse level - the Mark was seeking satisfaction FROM his job. I think the point back then was to corrupt it - to my ears the melting action figure’s last words turn into “I kiillll aaaallll” which is super ominous Mark of Cain foreshadowing if you believe it :P

(Sorry, I’m just reciting my watching notes at you, but it’s where all my thoughts live)

But yeah. In Dean’s prayer, I just suddenly felt… He said he was just a guy doing a job. And he identified God’s like… order for him to do this job. I wrote after 11x23 about how it was a burden, how awful this was for him. It took a year, but it hit, and Dean is carrying this job in a way I’ve never really felt he was before. In season 7 he was also going through the motions and again he mostly just had Dick to get revenge on, and that’s probably the most equivalent mindset, but I didn’t think he’d give up hunting, mostly because the big bad was such an easy obvious goal the story was structured around it was just his temporary feelings and the story could steer him back, and Purgatory came right after so he didn’t get to adjust to these feelings in the real world, he got a crash course in killing monsters where it felt pure to do so, and came back realigned. 

In this case Jack’s NOT evil and Dean is wrong and this is going to have to become apparent sooner rather than later, and if Jack isn’t a handy target for Dean’s rage -  he can find other short term things, like they’ll meet Asmodeus soon - then he’s going to come adrift. 

I don’t know if/think he should give up hunting as an endgame - I would rather he stayed in that world and at least assisting the fight though not in its front line any more. But oh god, please tell me Dabb just set it up to actually address the burden on Dean’s shoulders and lighten it via an extended family, and Dean being able to maybe one day HEALTHILY step away from his responsibility? 

Anyway I rambled all that because I think you’re right, that Dean really is a hair away from just getting in the car and driving, and who knows where but he isn’t going to be looking to hunt any monsters if he does go. I almost would kinda like to see him end the season making this decision and come back healthily although this is very much a first episode impression and everything is so excessively awful for Dean right now I can’t tell if this is just heaping more on him until he gets to the point it looks like he’d just disappear in the night and start sending Sam postcards 4 months later, for the sake of temporary, acute drama, or if this is setting up a longer term exploration of what Dean’s life even means to him and if he really even wants to be here doing this job.

At the moment without Cas I would say no.

It’s probably how it looks WITH Cas that that question gets interesting.

* * *

>  [deaneatscake](http://deaneatscake.tumblr.com/post/166374325038)
> 
> I agree with all of the above. What scared me the most was not only Dean giving a shit about his own life but also not about Sam. 
> 
> Sam thought the devil’s spawn was there in the diner and he had already demonstrated his power against them. But he just… lets him go in there? To wander off to prey and try to get the others back? Holy fuck. 

> * * *
> 
>  [mittensmorgul](http://mittensmorgul.tumblr.com/post/166377749550)

> I didn’t take it that step further there, as Dean seeing hunting in general as this burden he’d been handed by God, or what he now considers “just a job,” but the responsibility for holding together these cosmic-level catastrophes the universe keeps throwing at him.
> 
> If it really were just a matter of getting to live in the Bunker Bat Cave surrounded by all the stuff that used to make him HAPPY about hunting, that he “geeked out” over, and taking cases as they arose and feeling that he really WAS saving people by hunting things, then yeah, I think he’d be extremely on board with that. Thing is, that hasn’t been his life for a while now. And I don’t think that’s what he was talking about when he said it was just his job… 
> 
> Which was a line he delivered to the sheriff shortly after his failed prayer to Chuck. What he thinks of as his job now isn’t saving people and hunting things, it’s trying to do everything he’d always expected God to do… not even what he expected John Winchester to do, but freaking God Himself. And he doesn’t want that job any more than God did…
> 
> ( _Okay, Chuck… or god, or whatever. I need your help. See, you– you left us. You LEFT us. You went off. You said… You said the earth would be fine because it had me… and Sam, but it’s NOT, and we’re NOT._ )
> 
> Now give him a vengeful spirit or a wendigo (takes a shot) and I think he’d be just fine. But playing God is so not what he wants…

* * *

 [elizabethrobertajones](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/166378106968/if-it-werent-for-jack-i-dont-think-dean-would)

Yeah, that’s why I was talking about him being able to step back or have a healthy reconciliation with the job where he justs get to do the bits he likes, the parts he identifies with and define him (and make him a superhero because dammit he is one)… but not the bits where it’s an enormous cosmic burden to keep all the plates spinning, that have been piled onto him by various terrible things out his control all the way through the show, and Chuck just kinda patted him on the shoulder like great job spinning all those plates :P I think at the moment it’s so horrible for him I think walking away from the *entire* thing would be an easier way to deal with it as it is right now, at least to relieve all the emergency pressure valves of the weight on him :P I mean, if he stops hunting the show has to leap over that and drag him back, or end, so I don’t see it as a very plausible thing, but this was sort of about how he feels right now… I see the point he’d just quit on the spot if he didn’t have other things to keep him at it.

At the moment he’s so wrecked if he’s thinking he *just* does a job I’m not entirely sure how well he’d fare against a random ghost or wendigo >.> The original wendigo was used to tell us Dean’s whole philosophy on “saving people hunting things” and how he defined himself by the job and what it was worth doing for etc, and that seems to be what he’s lost :<


	3. Cas And Kelly Are Mom And Dad But Not Married

I figured out what’s been bothering me about the pyre scene.

Not a bad thing, this episode is perfect :P

They obviously made a huge deal out of who Jack’s parents were and came down pretty heavily on “Cas and Kelly”, but even though they were on the pyre together, there wasn’t a shot really showing 2 distinct bodies side by side on the pyre in such a way that we could clearly see them together. (Such as the less charged one from Asa Fox for example.) It would have been VERY easy to lean into the Mom & Dad framing of them side by side in death, but that is also a romantic trope and that’s *not* what any of it was about. For JACK it would have been better to show us his parents together to emphasise just how orphaned he’s found himself, and it’s not like Cas wasn’t affectionate towards Kelly in 12x23 and they had kooky expectant dad Cas jokes to lighten the tension in the first half.

But yeah, no “sorry you’re an orphan” shot for Jack - their bodies had been laid out at opposite ends of the house, treated separately, and no overhead shots of them together on the pyre, just glimpses and enough of an angle to see there were bodies on it… No treatment whatsoever of it as them being dead together being the most important thing to convey on screen. We didn’t even see Jack dealing with Cas’s death back at the house at all in the sense that he’d spent over half the episode looking for Cas but he didn’t even have a shot expressing that he was looking *at* Cas on the pyre, or really anything from his POV at that point. It was back on Sam to talk about it and Dean to light the pyre and say goodbye to Cas… I mean it’s hard to describe something by the lack what wasn’t there, but there was nothing to make Cas and Kelly’s joint tragedy over being Jack’s parents remotely a focus of the scene and therefore nothing whatsoever making the emotion of it about them and what they shared in life and now share in death. Which would easily, way, way too easily translate to looking like a romantic bond to lazy eyes/panicky fandom eyes.

I don’t wanna say they didn’t do it because there was some overriding emotional drama that that implication couldn’t overlap, but it DOES seem weird to me that the emphasis suddenly drained away on Jack’s parents despite it being the “welcome to the magic orphan trope, Harry Potter” official moment for him.


	4. Some Early Jack Thoughts

I have not peeked into my dash AT ALL since the new episode, mostly just scrolled a few blogs to catch myself up on gifsets etc, but I wanna put down a few more thoughts from rewatching 13x01 and 2 today - which was hours ago so I’m not sure how much I have to say -

\- in 13x01 *Sam* says that they “need” Jack - thinking of course about his portal opening abilities, and next episode is the one to start poking him about what else he can do, seeming really interested for the teleporting. He also has the conversation with Donsmodeus where he has already been researching what Jack can do and completely misses “Donatello”’s flip on Jack about moulding him because now Donssmodeus is talking his language about that, all of which vaguely worries me. I know there’s a discourse about Dean the Bad Parent out there but only from 2nd hand chat that it exists so I just wanna weigh in. 13x02 hammers home that “needing” people is BAD (which I covered a little more in my notes about the episode about how “i need you” is now a bad phrase and hopefully that loops back around to where it became such a hot subject in the first place and Dean says something more about wanting or loving Cas than needing him when he’s back, but Lucifer said it about Mary and Michael said it about Lucifer, and Sam said it about Jack. So. It’s not all sunshine over there even when it’s adorable and Sam is so supportive and I am loving every moment of him and Jack).

\- Sam talks about how Kelly and Cas thought Jack was worth all the fuss, and “so do i”, aligning himself with Jack’s parents etc etc he’s now morally responsible for Jack as a guiding figure. Dean had no such conversation and was not included in this conversation which was started BECAUSE Dean had said horrible things about Jack. I don’t think at the moment Dean’s on the level of “parenting” Jack, at least in the same way I don’t think Mary in season 12 can possibly compare to John for their entire upbringing when having a bad parent conversation. You can condemn her treatment of them and complain about how she should have reached out more or not left or whatever (I mean I’m pretty supportive right up to “lying about working with the BMoL” and then switch to sympathetically understanding while agreeing it’s a mistake but blah blah those power stories and that’s how we learn and grow around here)… But yeah none of it can possibly scar them like their entire youth spent with John’s version of parenting.

Granted literally all of Jack’s issues pretty much stem from Dean, whether it’s activating his memories of Lucifer reaching out to him and getting our first “I’m good” which means “I’m not good” which is SUCH a loaded statement about not just wellness but ethical morality levels (e.g. was that the first chink in Jack’s goodness where he has warring influences on him now - though I still of course think his core is completely good/neutral) and of course saying all the stuff about Jack to make him think he’s not worth it and then be so horrified and confused about his own life and abilities we get that last scene. Asmodeus barely managed to make a dent in Jack’s self-worth except for teaching him trust and wariness, but even then a better pep talk about God and all would have avoided the problem entirely if the Winchesters were forthcoming with their issues with faith and religion and explained the shittiness of this world’s Creation properly instead of being uncomfortable about explaining Lucifer and Chuck and the myriad issues they cause.

But yeah, I think Dean’s fucked Jack up immensely but he’s just not in a place to care or understand and he has not stated Jack is his responsibility in any other way than protecting other people from him, because he can’t see him properly yet. Another thing I caught while thinking about the framing of this all and Jack from Dean’s POV is that Jack looked enraged to see Dean at the police station when he was running from the angel radio, and to Dean it seems like *only* Sam taser-ing Jack avoided Jack attacking Dean again and he has no way to say whether Jack would have or not. We had already seen so much more of Jack’s nice side by that point we can assume he was just scared and running and overloading, but Dean does not know that. He’s also in no place for Sam’s attempts at sensitivity training to work, but Sam has already attempted to call out the problem Dean has a few times, to no avail but at least he’s putting the words out there, bridging the problem between them by making it clear they need to be on the same page, and trying to get Dean to cooperate.

(I haven’t seen the discourse about this but I wonder if the haste we have to assign them all as family members to Jack while the show is taking a slow approach to having Dean own any responsibility for Jack while Sam has dived straight into being the Best Uncle Ever has made this more of a problem because it’s hard to have Sam in one place with Jack and Dean in another and NOT see the connection to Sam and Cas automatically making him uncle or step father to Jack by proxy, while the earned family philosophy means Dean has not chosen any connection whatsoever to Jack except the one he already made clear, that he still sees Jack as a monster and a problem and even with deeper sympathy and understanding after spending time with him, he can’t credit Jack his human side or trust him to control the angel side… the 10x09 mirror conversation between them (or 2x11 if he’s seeing Jack as Sam and putting himself back in the season 2 mindset aka ranked one of his worst ever and proportionately THE worst) just goes to show his problems even more. He didn’t trust himself back in season 10 and wanted Cas as a failsafe to throw him into the sun. He’s probably looking up how to do that right now :P)

\- but to get back to Asmodeus and Jack, the big fuck up the Winchesters made in preparing Jack for the world was not warning him that having any sort of destiny was a Bad Thing. Asmodeus made it up completely but it goes in line with Kelly believing there was a higher purpose for Jack and Cas’s utter defeat about the idea saying it was all just random happenstance; though it was a circumstantial lie I find it interesting in the wider metaphorical picture in the same way Kelly praying to Sven for help in the open of 12x23 is circumstantial but fascinating in a wider picture :P Obviously there’s a massive Destiel barrier to communication in the room specifically in the general area of Donatello talking about having a direct line to God or not, because on a better day Dean could have been regular old bitter about that and snarked enough of a warning for Jack to get the idea that no such thing exists and God doesn’t care… And I hate that’s the HAPPY day for them, but there you go, Dean was still so fucked up about that prayer not being answered a couple of days before that he does the thing I saw a gifset pointing out from Sam’s same page speech about just shutting down completely when it comes to the subject of Cas and his death and Sam’s hope and God not helping and all that in general.

…

I’m pretty sure I’ve mis-explained all of these thoughts horrifically so my inbox is always there for me to get back to this maybe on Monday or something… it’s my birthday then and I love random meta asks from people confused about what I meant about something giving me a chance to write an even longer post. I’m genuinely excited to research up the table post I need to make about the final Bunker kitchen scene on me bday >.>


	5. 13x01: how to adopt a boy

> **Anonymous**  asked:
> 
> Me before this episode: ehm I dont want sam and dean to parent Jack wtf is shitty manchild daddy storyline. Me: after this episode: i dont want sam and dean do parent Jack. That is CASTIELS CHILD. They better not act like they can Replace his Real Father

* * *

Look, the truth of the matter is that I am Nougat’s mum now anyway so this entire argument is irrelevant but I think I’m cool with Sam and Dean having a crack at it BECAUSE of the complicated way they’re approaching it.

I KNEW it wasn’t going to be a corny baby man child thing because there’s no way that works with Sam and Dean’s characters and so now I am actually sure they’re writing it in character (you never know :P) I’m extremely happy with what I see. I don’t think Jack is a token to be used by the fandom for points for your fave parenting him. He very clearly represents all of TFW in various beautiful ways, so all 3 of them will have an influence on him. And he is a grown adult, but with a philosophical core to manage and shape.

Cas was chosen by Jack because of what he said about “who will keep him on a righteous path”. I see Cas as Jack’s morality. Not just his protector, but what makes Jack GOOD. His desire to choose Cas as his father is perfect, that he uses these terms for it. It’s exactly right - a shade presumptive, kinda creepy in how he got there, but for Jack as a character, it’s perfect for him. He comes pre-built with the Best Possible Character to choose as a father, but Cas is dead so he’s an ideal, an abstract concept rather than fucking up running around trying to deal with this (which also tbh takes one heck of a load off Cas - he can kick back and relax on this one for 6 episodes, by which time this landscape will be very different). 

Sam represents nature vs nurture for Jack, and believes in him and kept on being right about him. The restaurant thing is our symbol of that. Dean didn’t believe Jack would be there, and Sam did think he would have stopped there. That he was moving on foot, that he would be looking for help. That he was weirdly helpless, for all his powers. And he successfully tracked Jack down and got to have a heart to heart with him, and learned that Jack wasn’t inherently evil just because of who his father was, that he had picked Cas instead. And for Sam that is the biggest vindication he could ever get about his own self. I think he’ll fight Jack’s corner and help him be who Jack wants to be and believe in him 100% through the season.

Dean is wrong about Jack, but he will challenge him and teach him nonetheless, probably unwillingly. But he has a strong emotional core of absolute solid love for everyone, and adopts strays at such an alarming rate I think it’s about time we have an Ultimate Stray Adopting Will They Won’t They for him. Dean loves Cas deeply, and Jack defines himself by Cas. He loves Sam powerfully. He will probably before the midseason do something really stupid to protect Jack whether he means to or not; he stood back and watched as Fries Angel stabbed Jack, and Sam had to kill her. He doesn’t love Jack yet and he doesn’t think he should, because he blames Jack and he doesn’t trust his powers.

I noticed that Sam specifically didn’t correct Dean when he mentioned Jack was Lucifer’s son with a “well, actually, he claims to be Cas’s”, and I think that’s something Dean needs to understand and reconcile for himself that Sam trusted Jack because Jack said that, and I think how they all love Cas is also key in that. There’s just so much going on here that’s waaay complicated I can’t unpick yet, but I know it’s going to be important in the way Dean changes his mind on Jack. And the fact Dean’s like this now means he’s NOT parenting Jack, but that he’s going to have to be the one to warm up to him and CHOOSE him intentionally, willingly, and because if Jack says he’s family, it’s not just him saying it but proving it - I think Jack will earn it for Dean and from Dean. Which doesn’t really have anything to do with “parenting” at all but is about Dean’s love. And I think that Jack seeing that means he can be a guidance on how to love, but not really actively teaching Jack anything that isn’t snarky for the foreseeable future.

I mean Dean at least doesn’t want to replace any family figure for Jack and Sam just thinks Jack needs some help but he’s not like… desperate to be his father any time soon because I think he’s still getting over the heart attack Jack gave him in the opening line when he thought that was about Lucifer and that’s a WHOLE can of worms I will be delighted to see opened this season but again is a great big tangly bit of string that we don’t have the ends to yet. 


	6. Table Glimpse In 13x02

Okay, so we’re doing this again! :D Lizzy vs this effin table and the very obscure language in the seating plan that I’ve read into it over the years, and what this very specific, unique, unprecedented seating plan means in 13x02.

… first, some light reading.

Here’s my first long post collecting up my bizarre obsession with the bunker table and what it all means - it was asked in a Destiel context about 12x02 while my main interest has actually been in it representing Sam and Dean’s personal codependency arc, but anyway there’s a lot in here and I hope the way to get into my brain about it:

<http://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/152353976198/no-more-myself-only-you-i-cant-help-but-think>

Then I wrote this post towards the end of season 12 explaining some more and expanding my interest to other rooms and how some of the Bunker is used in general (although this isn’t exhaustive - there are a lot of other things that really interest me in the way they use the Bunker, this is mostly sticking to a basic theme of room functions and the tables in them being used as the staging)

<https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/158128116058/hey-i-was-reading-your-notes-on-the-last-ep-and>

This tag has in general the major stuff I’ve ever thought about this table out loud or just collected stuff I think is relevant for if I ever need to explain it, if you really want to browse everything, when I have tried to collect and explain as much as I can about this in the previous 2 posts:

<https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/tagged/look+at+this+effin+table/>

So, in 13x02, we basically only have them sitting like this in the introductory shot, and Dean gets up fairly quickly after they cover the usual Buckleming “let’s recap the basic lore in case we left any plot holes or didn’t over-explain something” ending, this time because they needed to have a quick down to business chat about what Asmodeus was and how many Princes of Hell are left (just him!) now that Dean, Sam and Cas (and/or Jack) have all killed one.

My main observation about the use of this table is that 99.9% of the time it’s shot so that they can use the cameras looking into the rest of the room to be slightly more interesting visually. 10x18 is weirdly cramped and serves as the best example of how strange it all is, to the point that diagrams were needed. But in general only the nearest 2 seats to the end on either side of the 8 person table get used, including the pizza party where Cas and Charlie sat on the end of the table rather than the normal logical thing of the party spreading out to fill the available space.

In this one shot they’re captured through the doorway - and I’m amazed no one’s done it before tbh but this director has had some creative shots elsewhere in the Bunker pretty much the entire time they’ve had it. It means Sam and Dean can sit at a different end of the table, but honestly more than anything I think it proves the point that they don’t always have to. That there’s some sort of assigned seating most of the time. There’s PLENTY of cold opens which start with the camera roving over them in ways where they could be sitting anywhere along the 4 stools on their side of the table and it not be too difficult to capture wherever they chose to sit, so there does seem to be some unstated seat preferences going on here.

I’ll quickly go over Dean first: he’s sitting up against the wall. He has his back against the wall - a phrase about being backed into a very difficult situation and not having many options. In this case Dean has no way to bring back his lost family, is defeated and checked out of the drama this season, and also sees no real options to do with Jack except for the fact he’ll inevitably go bad and Dean will have to kill him. It’s all fairly obvious, and he also doesn’t really care about this conversation, and then gets up and excuses himself from it rather than lingering, and really does seem to mean to just walk out of the room at that point.

Sam is sitting a seat over from his normal one, which I have linked to the Gadreel and Sam hit a dog arguments of Carver era, since he was sitting in that spot for the fights in 9x13, and for the resolution of the hit a dog grudge in 11x11. He was sitting there in 10x01 when he was in his sadness cornflakes montage about Dean and trying to help him, after the cold open showed the very bad path Sam had been going down, and while the story was priming us to be worried about the lengths Sam would go to to save Dean as the overreaction to the season 9 argument. Actually, my favourite example is 11x08, with Sully, when Sam is regressed to childhood, lurking next to his usual assigned seat, while the discovery of Sully in the kitchen turns to Dean literally ordering Sam to the library and Sam mooching off head held low… Considering Sam drifted to his spot even if he only stood by it (and the table was laid for him), I’ve associated it with this imagery and probably spelling out best how that spot in the table really seems to be a bad bad place for Sam when it comes to his issues with Dean.

(Obviously there are many opens and closes to episdoes where plot is being casually discussed and the table is just a table, so it’s one of those things where it comes into focus to me when things are specifically happening ABOUT their dynamic, rather than the table automatically meaning commentary on their dynamic is happening.)

After Dean gets up, Sam stops him to have another word about Jack:

I don’t know if this felt off-kilter to anyone else, visually, but we’re not used to seeing Sam sitting at the table like this - he’s right at the end of it as well on his side, sitting closer to the wall, but NOT up against it. And he continues to quietly assert his stance on Jack, as he has been repeating basically since the jail cell where he told Dean that Jack wasn’t evil, he was just a kid, and that they need him. I think this represents a new assertiveness from Sam - as they have been saying in the PR back as far as SDCC that Sam would continue to be more assertive, and to take the lead on Jack. Next episode we know he is alone with Jack, and however that happens, he is now left in a position of responsibility for him at the *least*, and actively asserting that responsibility at the best. The scene in the alley where Sam comes to sit with Jack was also very assertive in the sense that Sam is pushing hard to bond with Jack and to work on Jack that Dean doesn’t hate him, and to work on Dean to start to see Jack as Sam does.

In this scene Sam does not actually win Dean over at all, and I’ve reblogged a fair amount of meta about their miscommunication over Jack, where they are not approaching the concept from the same direction, especially with who they are mourning most and how helpless they feel about it. Sam feeling less helpless naturally makes him more proactive. Dean sitting with his back against the wall on the subject naturally disengages with the role and hands it to Sam to deal with, while Dean continues to be mostly checked out and doing his job on reflex.

Still, this conversation represents a sort of 3 times in one episode attempt from Sam to reach Dean, and while I think there’s some personal bias and especially this “needing” Jack thing from Sam that means he’s not entirely selfess about Jack, he’s by far the best person for Jack right now out there in the world alive and all, and his desire to help Jack is well-meant and probably more representative of how things will play out with Jack in the long run, and how we are supposed to be seeing Jack, in opposition to the conflict Dean offers which really begs the question of Jack earning family rather than a simple right or wrong about if Jack should be killed or not - in the LONG run. But this is a sort of digression from the table thing, and just my opinion on how their positions are being represented to explain how I can see it matching with my pre-established analysis of the language of this table.

I see the staging around the table as representative of the codependency and its various twists and turns when it’s being put between them, and a lot of the bad stuff in their arguments around it has been represented by the table. I think there are key areas that are being exposed as how to fix things between Sam and Dean, and that’s Sam’s assertiveness and Dean’s willingless to let him fly the nest, as it were. 12x22 had a good example of how it might play, but it’s not all the way there by a long shot. In this case I can see Sam’s position as a really good example of the changing ground between them, but because Sam’s only so assertive because Dean’s so broken. I am kind of seeing it as both a promise in the long run of this paying off in development when things are better, and also that it can be a way for Sam to build up brownie points as the more assertive and potentially much better positioned on the Jack thing than Dean. (Though I expect told you sos going BOTH ways before the end of the season because it’s NOT a black and white issue and they’re both representing far too far extremes on Jack still.) So that could mean he’s actually got some ground under his feet for later, to make it less like we’re shoving a tiny baby bird out the nest that is going from jumping at Dean’s orders to, like, idk, ideal endgame running an entire hunter network out of their war room as the confident hybrid MoL/hunter guy that has been a nice thing to latch onto since halfway through season 8. 12x22 teasing him leading the American Hunters against the BMoL was a good taste of the idea Sam could grow into this some day, but the interpersonal stuff between him and Dean is still rocky waters with issues they haven’t directly addressed, although in recent years the writing has been circling closer and closer to them.

At the moment Dean’s just too broken for me to speculate based on his choice of chairs aaaanything else but I will note my entire nonsense about this started because of trying to puzzle out their seating in 10x18 and to me this entire subject is intrinsically wrapped up in the matter of if there could have been under the table Destiel footsie in that scene, to which the answer is “yes, because Cas literally could have sat NEXT to Charlie if he hadn’t been all tangled up around Dean under the table, clearly, because wtf is going on in that one gif when he leans all the way over instead of moving his ROTATING STOOL ON A LONG ARM so we could get them clearly in shot together” and so I guess I am rounding this off with the (semi) cracky theory that Dean doesn’t wanna sit in his seat because it was where he sat next to Cas once, and the entire Bunker is as haunted as it was in 9x14.


	7. Jack Has No Idea Who He Is (circa 13x04)

> **[silenceofseclusion](http://silenceofseclusion.tumblr.com/)**  asked:
> 
> I'm sorry for saying this but.. Jack feels so fake to me! And now that I know he doesn't feel anything for most of the times, that feeling is even stronger. I know I know, actions are what matters and all. But, not really?

* * *

Ooh no I actually found that the most exciting and important line about him!

We don’t actually have that much exploration of what Jack IS in the sense of lore or him describing his experiences, so to get a sense of him is really important to look at everything he does and feels. 

At the moment his powers are entirely activated by his emotions, and some of them have been in defence of himself in an instinct against danger, which you’d assume any sentient creature would have. And some have been to get things he wants like the candy,  but again I think the “rat pushing the food button” explanation makes a lot of sense. There’s more candy in the machine, he wants it, he finds his powers will get more (we don’t know how he discovered he could get it out, he was already confident about the trick when he showed us). But now he has managed to prove he didn’t just vanish Asmodeus that one time because it was instinctive anything, but the “stop hurting my friends!” thing is probably a true motivation, because he reacted to save Sam as well.

So if we take his powers as a baseline explanation of his emotions then he IS having strong emotions, but perhaps not really on a level he can connect with. He says his powers are him but not him - they’re separate and they are running off of his emotions. Someone made the comparison to Lily Sunder the other day - she was CONSCIOUSLY using enochian magic and powering it from her soul. I wonder if the twin engines of the grace and soul in Jack are working together to create his powers.

I think the fact he has angel grace has been massively overlooked by us to this point because of course he’s got some superficial Cas traits, but those are as much from their mirrored positions of being strange and unfamiliar to earth and not quite fitting in even when they do seem to get the hang of things. Cas was always too special for the Gas n Sip, for example. I think though that deep down they’re also similar because they’re both extremely emotive, perhaps despite/in exception to what they are. Cas is described as having “too much heart” and whether the show ever mentions it again or not, Cas HAD a soul for at least 9 episodes, and whether he has it or not (and I’d say he does have it) it seriously affected how he feels. But he is still very much Cas in many situations. I remember after 9x23 there was a lot of discussion about how they didn’t show Cas crying, even when he was told Dean was dead. His eyes kind of glistened with tears a bit but they never fell… Jack’s also had wet eyes a LOT in the last few episodes.

I don’t think Jack has a great sense of what his feelings are or how to compare them, and he’s been stuck in the Bunker with the massively over-emotional Dean and Sam. But he’s expressed likes and dislikes, curiosity, and whether he’s not sure he’s grieving right or feeling everything or not, he wanted his mom, he clung onto her and cried/nearly cried some more when he was hugging her, and there was a deep emotional need he has for her. 

It doesn’t matter if he feels things differently or it’s filtered in some way, he IS feeling things and his emotions are the source of his power. He’s seeking Dean’s approval, felt betrayed when he found out Sam wanted to use him too… He had FEAR that he was evil, and the sense he didn’t WANT to be evil. It’s the Harry Potter conundrum. There’s a bit of Voldemort in him and even in book 1 he feels this sort of intense revulsion to the idea of being put in the “evil house” so he begs to be in Gryffindor, which he thinks is the goodest house where he can be good. But in the very nature of ASKING not to be put in the evil house, he’s actually making the most revealing decision of his entire character. That he WANTS to be good and brave and heroic. And despite 7 books struggle with the sense of internal evil that grows clearer as time passes, his actions are still good and heroic and it’s not just that he’s doing it because he wants to prove he’s good. It’s always his instinctive reaction, and his genuine unthinking kindness to others.

Jack’s powers are reacting to something deep down in Jack, and he saved Sam, and the fact that it was targeted to protect him are revealing in one way. Jack fearing he’s evil and complaining that he can’t do the thing that Sam thinks will prove he’s good means when Sam finds him hiding in the shadows, Jack thinks he just failed the test to be put in Gryffindor and now he HAS to go be put in Slytherin.

(never mind there are other houses and there’s shades of grey out there and like Mia shows you can be a monster but still be good. And even if he doesn’t like Anakin - probably because of that same fear of being evil - at the end of Star Wars, Darth Vader redeemed himself and struck down the Emperor, who had manipulated him into being evil. You could probably put Asmodeus getting into Jack’s head into that category and though OBVIOUSLY there’s a season of plot to come, in a way 13x02 did offer a mini example of that, complete with bottomless drop beside them, which, unfortunately, Jack didn’t chuck him into :P) 

So, idk, I find it interesting because I’m not sure we can trust how much he says about his feelings in the sense that in OTHER ways his character is deeply emotionally driven and he DOES have emotional attachments and stuff. Honestly, I kind of wondered if he has been depressed as well as just being different in his own interesting way. It can’t be a good mix, anyway. 

I think he has been struggling in some situations and that’s obvious, but it’s not a defining trait - it’s more like a deep worry he has, probably because of not understanding his nature. 

I really hope Cas gets some more time to talk to him about who and what he is and that they can relate to each other, because I’d be fascinated to see them compare their experiences… I think the lack of a reaction or confusion from Jack IS because he has a sort of alien nature, some of it is inherent in not being human, some of it is being newborn, and some of it is trauma… Like, no wonder he has no idea what he’s feeling. 

(Sorry if this seems ranty at you, I’ve mostly been wanting an excuse to talk about this since like 5am today :P) 


	8. Dean is Not John to Jack

I’m not entirely sure - unless I have probably reblogged and forgotten but it was presumably not the main point - that I’ve seen any sort of discussion specifically of the Dean is/isn’t John parallel focusing on the idea that Dabb actually loves these one way then the other mirrors and they were extremely prevelant in season 12, like character swapping who they were mirroring halfway through an episode, or mirroring someone in some aspect but in a direct opposite way for another aspect.

I’m pretty sure I 110% agree with [the meta that Dean is not strictly behaving like John to Jack, but Sam’s having some problems over how he percieves the relationship dynamics in family stuff, and seeing Dean through the lens of how John treated him, while Dean’s seeing having to look after Jack and “mother” him as basically another round of raising psychic Sammy as his mother & father, and being given ultimate life or death responsibilty on Sam’s goodness.](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/167173478728/i-cant-respond-to-your-reply-directly-for-some)

But I also 110% agree that [the parallel that Dean is at the very least hollowed out and empty - and went to Missouri right after it happened lol - because he lost the love of his life and blah blah all the John parallels for emotional damage of losing a loved one. There’s not much to say here, the surface level crack posts pretty much do all the work :P](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/167076138273/so-its-textual-that-dean-is-like-john-and-john)

Sam pointing out that Dean is acting like John in 13x04 is in relation to how he’s acting to Jack but we’re free to question and work out a deeper meaning there, specifically about Sam’s perception. I’m not feeling at all critical of Sam, I’m intellectually curious and sympathetic to his side too (but the show is doing a more obvious job presenting it as the more okay path right now - relative to Dean. For Dean piling on that grief is his excuse and we’re meant to be invested in that and therefore sympathetically excuse him BECAUSE he’s a main character), but essentially the end result of that argument is that Sam is the one acting like John, and projecting it onto Dean for the surface level treatment while his treatment of Jack falls more in line with the portrayal of John’s parenting. 

Also I’d agree that if you do take a surface level look at the treatment Dean’s handing out, you CAN draw parallels to John… My sympathy to Sam and Dean both means I see this more as a narrative thing where this season is about fathers and they’re both going to have to pass through this dark state because reckonings about fathers may be coming further down the line and John totally sucked so not only are they confronting themselves in Jack but through their treatment of him they’re confronting aspects of John. 

I’d love to see how it plays out and retroactively come back to this discourse because it’s all too fresh and painful and we can’t say right now who will or won’t be vindicated, or get catharsis.

But anyway, if the mirror about John towards Jack is meant to be critiqued and it doesn’t super duper apply, or I like how that reflects all the harder in Dean’s case on how he IS acting like John, but not towards Jack, just in his own behaviour while mourning Cas and getting even more hardened. He literally spelled out in 12x22 how losing Mary hit John, and now he’s beginning to act that way as well. And THAT aspect of it is not complicated or open to critique or showing us where there are already subversions and Sam and Dean both offer a little kindness to Jack after confronting their own behaviour, Sam in 13x03 and Dean in 13x04 - and they’re not perfect yet by a long shot but the tiny gestures for now are enough to prove neither is their father exactly in this respect and both are due some sort of confrontation with his lingering memory…

But yeah, no, Dean is super duper mourning Cas just like John did, and Sam calling him out as acting like John - well it’s a very uncomplicated link to make on THAT side of the story. Dabb’s mirrors are never so simple as when he spells them out that’s the obvious one. Sometimes it may have been a well no actually he’s acting like Mary, or Bobby, or some other parental unit and that was what was being subverted and the call out was only to make us look harder at what was going on with him in broad terms of his parental influences. Or in this case it’s one of the ones where it’s like “well of course he’s like X but it’s not what the surface text would tell you, it’s a completely different aspect of it.”

tl;dr I keep seeing misunderstandings where people are upset about the comparisons back and forth and I think this might be somewhere at the heart of it - that the “yes of course he is” parallels are often focusing on the grief, and the “no he’s not” are focusing on the parental mirrors, and unless the arguing blogs are specifically a stan and a heavily Dean critical blog crossing paths, it’s much more likely that some context has been wildly missed and an out of context post which didn’t explain ANYTHING has worked up some ire about this, because both are true at once, but in their own different contexts.


	9. Need vs Want in 13x05

> **Anonymous**  asked:
> 
> I just realized after Sam tells the kid about how he knew he was lying because his eyes darted to the side, we got Billie later on asking Dean what he wanted and Dean's eyes dart to the side and he says free the ghosts. Which. Okay. We knew that's not what he really wanted anyway but I just thought it was a funny little thing. Probably coincidence because he does that eye darting all the time BUT I found it interesting nevertheless :D

* * *

  


Yeah, it could be he’s just shifting uncomfortably given that he’s been put in such a position and he probably didn’t have a pre-decided list of demands, or he’s just thinking about what he can ask for. Or he’s thinking about what he CAN ask for, and thinking about what he WANTS, and what he needs. 

(And Jensen could have been making Dean shift around like that for any number of small reasons as silly as that’s just how you act when someone asks you a direct question with a hard answer and since you’re not going through the actual situation yourself you just act some mild discomfort to add some depth to it all… So I’m really just interested that you brought up the line to me and this happens as a bonus that other parts of the episode call out intentionally or not :P) 

Aside from that little moment to think about it he gets to his answer pretty quickly, but the hunt is on his mind and all he was trying to do - why he even got himself in this state in the first place - is because he wasn’t thinking of himself as anything more than a means to free the ghosts anyway, even if it meant using himself as a disposable tool to do it >.>

But Billie asks what he WANTS and that’s such a loaded word in the show’s language because it’s got the whole need/want thing going on with it, and just last episode Cas was being called out for saying the Winchesters NEED him. 

And the whole weight is over here on Dean who started it all by saying he needed Cas instead of that he loved him, and for some weird reason that’s spiralled into a massive seasons-long call out on him not using his words rather than just being like yeah okay good enough still shows you care… (no, i have no clue what they’re implying with that :P) 

TBH I’m kinda laughing now because [I was talking about Benny calling out Dean on need/want in 10x19 in Dean’s subconscious](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/167166565143/10x19), and saying how it was basically what Cas went through in 13x04 in terms of having that relationship questioned about what they actually want or need from each other. And how it’s affected them not to know. 

And now you point out Billie asking Dean what he WANTS, and she’s giving him all the opportunities to use his position to ask her for all the stuff he always asks for when they cut all these deals with her over and over. Which basically means she was expecting him to bargain with family, because I don’t think she was expecting him to be that nihilistic and selfless, and I think she was expecting to go several rounds of warning him about consequences and the natural order, and I think that’s what tipped her off that he’d changed. Not that he was asking for the ghosts heroically, but because he had lost all hope.

It probably isn’t a coincidence he gets asked that exact phrase right now in the middle of all this, basically. It’s a very clearly identified theme in the show which has enough repetitions that I think it’s a stock phrase by this point along with stuff like “did what I had to do” or other things. Declaring you’re “needed” basically demands the question “but are you wanted” and lines like the 10x19 one make it clear we’re meant to think of them together, and that “I need you” isn’t good enough, that “want” is a more powerful and honest word.

So Dean not “wanting” anything more than the ghosts saved is a sign for us, as well as to tip off Billie, that at the very least his true desires have taken such a pounding lately he just doesn’t know what he wants any more, and another sign of his depression that he doesn’t even have the hope to ask for anything he might want personally. 

I think asking for the ghosts is very selfless and I kind of love him for it, but there’s layers to everything and the surface level gesture is much sadder when you look below the surface and ask why he DIDN’T answer the question of what he wants with anything more personal. One of those things where Dean making deals for his family is actually more a sign of him being at least normally messed up rather than utterly hopeless and mechanically acting the part of the hero…

It also makes an interesting need/want kind of thing because if the expectation is he should ask for Cas back (and dramatic irony demands he does because if he had Billie would have told him no, like 11x17 with Sam, but again, that’s assuming he’s functioning somewhat normally - the dramatic irony is dependant on the fact Cas is back and we know it since last episode and returning at the end of the episode, not anything wider like Mary has been alive all along - that’s the dramatic irony of Billie sending him back when she does after he asks). Then we have Cas being what he “wants” back here. At the end he says he “needs” a win, and we get the framing of Cas coming back being that win. 

But of course that just frames Cas as being needed rather than wanted again… [Which in this context isn’t bad because it’s supposed to be the baseline return to form](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/167410340903/ok-so-if-all-four-of-them-are-gonna-be-in-a) and even if things look different the other side of all this nonsense for them, they have to actually address their issues and so starting with Cas still feeling like he’s needed rather than wanted, and Dean getting Cas back because he said he needed an abstract thing Cas could do for him rather than emphasising why he WANTS Cas in particular… It’s stuff for them to build on. Take them back to the start but maybe they have better tools to communicate it now or a better understanding of themselves.

Also, super tangent now but just thinking about how there’s an uneasy tension between whether Dean would ask for Cas or Mary or both (and I do think as I said this would be the Cas moment and when Dean asks about Mary at the end would be obviously the part about her, just looking at the narrative threads going into each moment and how they serve it - one about want/need and then one about Dean’s hope.) This feels kind of interesting because it’s making me muse on how [Cas and Mary last season ran parallel storylines](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/165079514193/i-dont-know-if-this-will-make-sense-but-im-kind) and this season they are again are being put side by side for Dean. He *could* have been asking for either of them, but Mary and Cas are running parallel lines but *mirrored* to each other, and to Dean and how he relates to them. 

Mary is a character he “needs”:

> Dean, you gave me what I  **needed** most. I want to do the same for you. 

But being the parent, that’s a completely different direction and being a family relationship and they’re dealing with missing childhood connections here…

> We can get it right this time. But I  **need**  you to fight.
> 
> Right now, I  **need**  you to fight.
> 
> I  **need**  you – I  **need**  you to look at me, Mom.
> 
> I  **need**  you to really look at me and see me.
> 
> Mom, I  **need**  you to see me.

That sort of need is a very different type because of the different level of emotional connection between them. That Mary has been missing all this time but it was what Dean would benefit from a relationship with her that he NEEDED, that fills all the broken bits in his psyche, and children can be dependant on parents in a different way, that it’s the one direction that this goes in that anyone actually ASKED for, aka Mary wanting children vs Dean being forced to be Sam’s parent. Dean needing Mary is okay, and the problem is that she’s not giving back to him, she’s ignoring him in this scene and it’s metaphoric for his wider feelings about her.

Not actually sure I saw anyone actually analysing the “need”s in this speech before and don’t let me get into the web of parallels between what I generally refer to as the Crypt Scene/Swan Song parallels for their most notable moments… Gah :P 

After months of musing on it since around 12x17 ([which I think was the final straw for me](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/159352172593/so-basically-you-cant-talk-to-mittensmorgul) :P) I think I’ve decided one side is revelations about feelings and the other is affirming bonds which were always there but tested… the UNCERTAINTY is the difference because no one would doubt that there ARE bonds of love between the Winchesters, they just heap great big piles of issues on top of it, while it’s more about reciprocation of feelings in the bundle of nonsense I’ve labelled crypt scenes… But I guess to say, that it’s again about need/want but in a different way where the family bonds are testing need and the others are testing want. 

Need broke through in 8x17 but it wasn’t enough to keep Cas (which was just the set up of the episode anyway regardless of the line change, but I think the core of why a lot of people agree with the change and that Dean truly wasn’t ready to say it, especially when season 8 ends up being just the beginning of this arc), and by the next cycle through it had become about need and want. In 9x22 Cas “needed” the angels more than Dean to accomplish his goals (aka redeeming himself to and fixing heaven, which had motivated him all through season 8 and 9 and was not an insignificant part of his character stuff), but picked him because of emotional connections. In 10x22 Cas’s speech comes from a place of want, not need, making clear it was eternal devotion to Dean not a need that becomes inconvenient when Dean gets too murdery and has to be flung into the sun as Dean ordered. And so on. The call out on the language begins after the themes have had time to adapt to the change in 8x17 and exploring the possibilities in the language this opens up. The 10x19 call out of need/want was serious thematic foreshadowing of a reverse crypt scene because the language is so tightly connected.

Anyway. To use Mary as the “needed” character, but in a way that is emotionally sustainable because she’s Dean’s mother and legitimately can offer that bond without it being messed up, and that’s the actual ideal character resolution, it bounces off Cas that Dean’s going through similar issues but with “want” instead… I’m going so far down this tangent now, but in 12x03 Cas backs off and lets Mary “have” the guys because he thinks they need her more, that she belongs with them because she’s more obviously NEEDED, because of the assumed possessiveness of being a mother to them, again, in a way that isn’t BAD for Mary’s dynamic with her sons, but can’t possibly compare to how Cas actually relates to them and it’s a false equivalence where he puts himself in “need” rather than “want” that makes him back out and leave… when you’re dealing with Dean’s messed up sense of want and need of the people around him, thinking he needs one more than the other is so dangerous (and probably the source of a lot of fandom fighting :P). 

Cas feels like he’s the least needed of all of Dean’s family, but he’s actually the one Dean WANTS the most.

Because “want” is also the free will choice to CHOOSE to invite someone into your life. I mean it’s the found family dynamic. They WANTED Bobby as a father figure and he had no obligation to them to be it and they didn’t have an obligation to be good sons to him but given the messed up dynamics with the father who NEEDED them to be that and they NEEDED him, being able to choose family was huge for them. Anyway, Cas understanding that he’s WANTED, that Dean is including him in the family because he wants him to be there and not because he’s useful, would be an enormous moment of understanding for Cas, since his arc has been all about feeling like they only need him for his powers, and all the offers for him to be family and to stay to not stick yet because he’s too uncertain of HOW he’s required to be there. 

And I think with Amara’s line of Mary being what Dean “needed” most, with 12x22 having Dean say he “needs” her so many times, and the need/want thing being something that ties so much into how Cas is constantly feeling like he’s ~only~ needed and that being needed is a negative thing for him, with “want” being the offered better option… When Billie asks what Dean WANTS, the language of the show deeply supports that the answer would be “Cas”. The parallel structure of Cas and Mary to Dean also means that Mary gets covered later which means the earlier moment can be about Cas. AND Cas has lived in the negative space of pretty much every question or moment Dean’s been remotely challenged about this since he died.

I’m pretty sure all these layers would hold up to scrutiny, anyway >.> 


	10. Sometimes It Is Poetic

I’m still not over Billie’s line “This universe can be so many things, and sometimes it is poetic.”

This is what I said in my notes:

> Hell yeah it is Billie. I’ve been saying so for ages, but this really puts it in such a beautiful way. This is Dabb’s entire job. He makes this universe *rhyme* with itself. This is what his mirrors and parallels and character repeats have been doing. I even compared scene transitions in 13x03 to the way poetry ends each line in a verse. It’s something all the writers have been doing - making the story rhyme.
> 
> Gaaaaah. THIS is Dabb’s writer meta commentary, perhaps. I think I can trust Yockey to spell it out this way :D

I’m just so obsessed with how in the last few episodes especially there were all those moments where things would happen like Dean saying things that are burned stay dead and cut to Cas wandering around the empty, or all the dramatic irony in scene transitions. And Dabb writes so much with parallels and repeats of other themes and ideas and we get scenes and shots which are mirrors of past things… There’s a whole poetry to the way this is written. And things like Cas dying as Jack is born or anything really where the writing is laying things out side by side, making I guess rhyming couplets of things that look the same.

I’m just floored by Cas and Dean spending time episode to episode in dark after life or Other realms, spaces beyond mortality anyway, and both getting this confrontation about if they want to live or die, sleep forever and stay in the veil or choose to live. And they have different stories, different answers… Cas wins and Dean is sent back with the old line of work to do. There IS a poetry in the comparison between what they’re going through, though, even if it’s half-rhymes, they’re part of the same rhyming structure to each other.

I think as well with Sam and Dean, when you write poetry you label the first rhyme A and the second one B, and those two don’t rhyme but they work together in whatever structure you have, they’re inseperable, there’s no structure without A and B, but A rhymes with more A lines and B rhymes with more B lines, and together they create the rhythm and pattern that makes it easy to read. That’s all of Sam and Dean’s yin and yang conflict where they perpetually are opposites or just different from each other, but they complement each other too. Some of their issues have come when they swap rhyme schemes and the story is told again where they’re the other way around. This time, Sam’s desperately trying to come up with Dean’s lines for him, to make him go back into sequence and carry on as he normally does.

Just… I don’t know, I’ve been admiring the weird internal beauty of Dabb’s parallels since Mel first started pointing out to me how much he did it back in like season 10, and by now it’s such a nuanced web of connections, I really love this line just for giving me another sort of structure to try and think about how to compare them all, and read them in the ongoing story.

Each one is like the beat at the end of a line and where they match is a rhyme or a half-rhyme to another thing… Or deliberately NOT the rhyme, like how you might end a dirty limerick by using the blatantly wrong word while you’d all know to fill in the gap with the right one :P … I’m just rambling, sorry, this is such a Lizzy Brain post but i wanna get it out at least for my own reference :P


	11. I'll Just Wait Here Then: Cosmic Poetry

I’m no good at song meta so someone else can deal with whatever was playing over the last montage. But there is one song I listened to roughly 500 times when it was first released, and that was “I’ll Just Wait Here Then,” the Destiel love song inserted into Act 1 of Marie’s play in 10x05.

I’ve written before about how that song works on some absolutely ridiculous meta levels. To try and be brief about all this: It takes a moment in an old Cas episode which had DeanCas interaction but was one of the least romantic of the whole bunch, featuring some terse back and forth, some nice sort of low key snarky bonding maaaybe, and Dean hanging up on Cas because he was cranky and wanted to sleep, and Cas, revealing how alien he is, stares confusedly at his phone and then announces that, okay, he’ll just stay right where he is until Dean is ready for him.

That last message was particularly important in season 10 when Dean was so not ready for Cas, and the song placed the moment in a new context in current canon, told us there was romantic subtext to their relationship, and transformed Cas’s grumpy comment into a ballad about how he feels about Dean and would wait for him like his guardian angel until Dean was ready for him. It recontextualises the old moment, shows us how we can interpret Destiel into a moment but also of course it added a sort of new Destiel moment in to the current text of season 10, which through its thematic relevance to Dean’s emotional unavailability because of the Mark and having just been a demon, Cas was cut adrift. Which he was, at that point.

Of all the random things to do, sticking Cas at a payphone and then just having him stand there, I assume marvelling at being alive and smiling at the occasional passerby, until Dean drives all the way to his location, was pretty ridiculous. But it meant that Cas was done waiting, that Dean had come to him at long last. And, interesting, picks up what Robbie left off - the subtext world of the play where it’s all at one step removed as a ~transformative work~ inside the main one… It’s a point in the map, the middle of these 3 moments, and it teaches us how to take a previous moment and to take it and turn it inside out and turn it into romantic intent. This one takes the previously unreachable, “non canon” love ballad, that transformed the original “I’ll just wait here then” into a romantic moment, and re-applies it to the text, with actual pay off for the waiting.

A lot happened in that episode but I’m pretty sure this is at the very least the second best thing in the episode to me :P


	12. Door framing around Jack in 13x06

Blargh so I’ve been talking about it here and there and everywhere and actually in some detail in some cases, but there’s some other stuff I only covered in my watching notes while suffering The Worst Migraine, so I mostly just want a thing that I can find in my My Stuff or tables tag to actually just find and look at :P

So 1st gif: Jack in the library aka the Family Room of the Bunker, learning to be a hunter, and getting very enthusiastic about the job. Notice Sam hovers by the door while Dean moves right in to the head of the table immediately. Jack resurrected Cas and he doesn’t even know yet, but Sam and Dean have their Opinions on that, and Sam’s is to be uncertain about how Jack did that and why (and, I think, especially later in the episode it’s clearer when he asks Dean about how happy he is, perhaps a bit peeved that despite all his effort with Jack he brought back Cas instead of Mary), while it has already caused the entire like remaining 75% of Dean’s flip on his view of Jack, which will be expressed at the end of the episode in the conflict there.

2: Cas waits for dramatic effect while Sam and Dean warm Jack up to getting surprised, and emerges from the other room. Generally framing things from Library to War Room is bad if you’re coming out of the library and good if you’re coming into it, as Cas does. The War Room represents the nebulous idea of conflict and Jack’s had tons of that, pretty much all of it caused because he didn’t get born and immediately have Cas there to guide and protect him, as per the ideal scenario he modelled and attempted to set up from the womb. Cas himself is coming from turmoil and conflict and rejoining the little family that they made while he was gone, but of course we see it from Jack’s POV because it’s about his reaction and in the bigger picture of course it happened for Jack in the sense he’s the one who did it.

3: The infamous hug where Dean lurks in the background, overseeing this reunion and being emotionally linked to it in a powerful way where it’s clear he has a stake in it too because why include him like this. Sam hanging back to the side for other reasons also contributes to him not being a part of this, while Dean gets to observe this reunion; I have a lot of feelings about the reason Jack reached out for Cas and the connection between Dean and Cas that Jack accidentally facilitated, so in a way the 3 of them are connected about Cas’s return in a weird way where all 3 had a part in it. I wrote already about Dean being in the heart of the family and head of the table, and of course the fact this is the family room being used for the meeting. If they’d met in the War Room the entire tone and meaning would have been different.

4: On the other hand Dean’s not involved except off to the side of the foreground, observing, as Jack demonstrates his powers. [@mittensmorgul](https://tmblr.co/mH08bFF21ewTCayiwIXZEOg) has written quite a lot all over the place about how Jack completely brushes off his powers bringing back Cas, which he didn’t realise he’d done, to focus on the little magic trick he had learned and the minuscule amount of control he does have. Sam’s purpose in this framing is now revealed as he’s been worried and curious about how Cas came back from the moment they start talking in the episode, and finding out Jack did it has been making him more and more worried. His expression when Jack moves the pencil is surprise and at the end of the episode he’s the one who reacts strongest to seem scared of Jack, by raising his hands and backing off. Cas and Sam are the ones connected to being concerned about Jack’s powers, the ones invested in his arc for these reasons, and when Dean makes the decision to send Jack home with them of course it’s them in the car as the most judgement free people imaginable after you accidentally kill someone with your magic powers you can’t control. This framing shows in the opening moments what’s basically the set up for the conclusion and getting some important emotional moments out of Sam and Cas when trying to comfort Jack about what he’d done. Specifically, Cas and Sam are shown with Jack about his powers, Cas and Dean are shown with Jack about family.

5: On the other side of the episode we return to Jack in the Bunker where he’s in the same seat but feeling like absolute crap. The room is darker, and he’s no longer engaged with anything, just sitting sadly staring into space. Now we get a sense of him being watched; he’s returned to this room because it HAD good associations but it is different, colder, less welcoming now. The one doing the watching is, of course, Sam (and Cas) because of the thing about Sam observing Jack earlier in the season - I mean Cas would be doing it too, but Sam has thematic history with this, and he and Cas are essentially placed to stare at Jack while Jack sits away from them. In the motel room as well, TFW1.0 cluster into a nook of the room to talk in low voices about Jack while Jack sits on the bed, also silent, and probably able to hear them, and there’s similar framing of him sitting being talking about or stared at.

6 & 7: some of the best shots this episode are the ones looking from the Library into the War Room, as Jack has to give up the comfort of the home the Bunker offered to him and move in to face the conflict. Here we have Dean returning and the camera going from his arrival at the top of the Bunker to Jack lurking in the Library still. Dean joins Cas’s side and he and Cas are again literally aligned on top of Jack, while Sam is still off to the side. Again, Jack and Dean are linked just because we go from Dean’s entrance to Jack lurking, listening from the other room. They know he’s here this time at least. His isolation from the family group is obvious, especially compared with the start of the episode where he was in the heart of the family and Dean’s arrival sort of flanked him into being in the middle of them all.

8 & 9: Jack gets up from the no longer welcoming Library and crosses through into the War Room, where of course there’s that prison imagery lighting on the floor that he walks into the middle of - he feels trapped here, he has to fly the nest, and he’s facing the consequences. He comes down the stairs demanding to know details about the guard, and to get into the conflict. From here, of course, everything goes down around the War Room table, because that’s where you have fights :P

10 (bonus off topic but last space in the gifset): the dark Library and its lights work excellently to give Jack wing imagery, right before he stretches his wings and flies. Previous shots in this discussion took him from just off to the side, I guess mimicking that Sam or Cas n Dean were looking at him. He also has wings with the sparks but I don’t like giffing flashing things, because migraine. 


	13. Cas makes Good Coffee

Aaaah, I’m still worked up about this.

The framing really suggested Cas made it to me, even without knowing his history of making coffee all day at the Gas n Sip. Cas was trying to stop Jack going in to wake Dean up (and knowing it was Dean, or that Dean would be the problem sleeper, anyway) and he has that light hearted fun responsibility for him here (obviously mirrored in the end of the episode when Jack goes to help with the ghoul fight and gets shot for real and then experiences Actual Consequences).

Dean asks who’s making coffee, and Jack looks to Cas:

and the scene ends on Cas’s resigned look 

as if because he was responsible for Jack, now he is responsible for the “clean up” of the situation, aka Jack roused the grumpy sleeper who isn’t going to be happy until he gets coffee for his troubles.

(For his part it COULD be Jack was looking at Cas like… wow, that just happened?? without implicating him in making the coffee, but there’s only so many ways a character looking around at another character can be taken as an answer to a posed question and for the sake of meta, extremely important in other unstated answers to questions throughout the show around Cas’s arc and the Destiel nonsense.)

I think though it’s a fairly safe hypothesis that that cup of coffee comes from a pot that Cas put on for Dean, and knew exactly what to do. In 12x08 for example he was bringing them coffee so I feel like it is something he does (and in fan fic I use it quite a lot because it’s a common gesture from Cas). It’s Cas’s link to humanity - both to his own and to humanity in general. In 8x21 he’s protecting the angel tablet for the sake of Heaven, but to do so he exploits his human knowledge, hangs out with humans drinking human coffee and making odd small talk with Biggerson’s servers across the country. Coffee is important to his connection to humanity. And it’s important for his connection to Dean, I think. 

Dean happily drinks the coffee and Cas is linked back to him by Sam’s suspiciously tactical division of the labour, and they’re linked again by Dean using his coffee to stop Cas getting up… I mean, Dean is still in his JAMMIES at this point, and Cas is just getting up, like, right, off we go. Was he planning to help Dean change?? I mean?

(Okay not that last comment is not analysis. That is a fan fiction gap :P I am still slightly hysterical about this episode.)

But yeah, Dean keeps Cas around because he has coffee. He’s asking for a moment, asking to recover from sleep (and the scare Jack gave him) with the coffee that Cas made. Cas acts grumpy but he’s happy to oblige Dean. He’s happy to oblige Dean to dress up for him, quote Tombstone at him, and play along being a cowboy for him when they go to the crime scene. I keep comparing it to him saying “werepire” when he’s acting all Texas Ranger for Dean because this shows Cas living a little, doing things for Dean, and even enjoying it. The werepire thing was unheard and Cas was isolated in the Bunker, trying to help by doing research, but in the beginning of his spiral, unheard by Dean. Now they’re playing along together and equal.

And the coffee pot in 9x06 is all symbolic of Cas’s banishment from the Bunker, and even worse time than 11x04 and going right back into the roots of Cas’s recent, Dean-related trauma (aka, Carver era vs Gamble era), and at the time his attempts to fit in with humanity, to mimic the men who came to drink the coffee while he was also having his own and learning how to play along. Dean is his guide in these things usually, and he was adrift. Again, it’s just pulling this idea forwards into current canon and looking at how things might be different, how Cas isn’t banished or neglected or unheard, how he’s an assumed part of the family, how he and Dean are portrayed having a comfortable dynamic. 


	14. Dean n Cas In A Motel parallels 8x08 and 13x06 (spec)

**Anonymous**  asked:

> Ok so if all four of them are gonna be in a *cowboy themed* motel in 13x6 they're gonna have to split up 2 and 2 right??? So I'm really gonna need Dean and Cas to share a room and then have a convo that's reverse of the "Talk to me" one in S8 where instead they talk about how they both did feel suicidal but how they've both overcome it. ~For reasons unknown~

* * *

That would be great mirroring, and it’s always good to compare the fun episodes where things seem back to normal to 8x08… However… Sorry, but this is a bummer reply, I’m just not good with leaving off things like this :P

I sort of feel though that neither Dean or Cas got to completely overcome things in their respective paths through dark other worlds… Cas said he’d just keep fighting and even if the standing up was an important part, he acknowledged he was going back with a sense of hopelessness that he’d get what he truly wants - and that’s just how it was in the Empty, while it sounds like he may have forgotten the experience so it’s for now a metaphorical state he passed through and we got to see it vocalised and it probably means roughly where he’s up to. But the despair of resolution, the fact need/want has been called out for US to know it’s a major theme but Cas of course hasn’t actually talked face to face with any Winchester, let alone Dean, to resolve need/want, which is the core of his depression, thematically… He’s come back with levelled up determination and a will to live, which is great, but there’s so much work to do before he feels happy even if he DOES remember the Empty. I’ve written ridiculously long things tracking his arc so I’ll just say that this was a great step forwards for him but in no way actually resolving anything. 

For Dean as well, Billie sent him back but it was with the “work to do” order/motivation that’s made Dean and Sam power through a lot of their worst times, and like how in the Empty nothing new was actually said about Cas, it just brought everything up that was troubling him so we’d get a sample of how he feels, that was just repeating the theme for Dean that he started this season on - that at best he’s going to feel like a guy doing his job, because someone more important than him told him he had to and he can’t stop now. 

Billie’s words are the sort of advice he got in season 7 after Cas (and then Bobby) died, from Bobby, Frank and Eliot Ness, all of which was a variation of the same sort of nihilism about doing the job because it’s the job and you’re the one who does it. I’m in most agreement with the meta I’ve seen that Dean didn’t go into that whole mess looking for a reason to die, he just was in that state Bobby described: 

> BOBBY:  
> I want to talk about your new party line.
> 
> DEAN:  
> Party? What are you talking about? I don’t even vote.
> 
> BOBBY:  
> “The world’s a suicide case. We save it, it just steals more pills”?
> 
> DEAN:  
> Bobby, I’m here, okay? I’m on the case. What’s the problem?
> 
> BOBBY:  
> I’ve seen a lot of hunters live and die. You’re starting to talk like one of the dead ones, Dean.
> 
> DEAN:  
> No, I’m talking the way a person talks when they’ve had it, when they can’t figure out why they used to think all this mattered.

I’m picking on this conversation because it’s the most detailed but also because it’s the one Dean has WITH Bobby so in no way shape or form can it be about Dean losing Bobby, except that of course this episode gave Dean and Sam both a private conversation with Bobby about where they were at, so we could have a good last moment with him each, and also to gauge how they’d react to his death (Dean with this massive depression caused by losing Cas and his betrayal to pile on top of) and Bobby’s last advice apply after as well. His advice being:

> BOBBY:  
> Come on, now. You tried to hang it up and be a person with Lisa and Ben. And now here you are with a mean old coot and a van full of guns. That ain’t person behavior, son. You’re a hunter, meaning you’re whatever the job you’re doing today. Now, you get a case of the Anne Sextons, something’s gonna come up behind you and rip your fool head off. Now, you find your reasons to get back in the game. I don’t care if it’s love or spite or a ten-dollar bet. I’ve been to enough funerals. I mean it. You die before me, and I’ll kill you. 

Cheery. 

But this is essentially what Billie does for Dean. She reads him, sees he wants to die, and he tells her that he doesn’t matter, so she reassures him that he has a job, that he is important, that he’s in this cosmic position of responsibility. It would almost be encouraging, to know you’re not meant to die that day, that there is a reason for you to be alive. But not for Dean in the state he was in then.

Cas coming back is GREAT and of course it’s going to make Dean wildly happy. But he’s been feeling this way about the job a long, long time in ways that aren’t to do with Cas at all but is just his underlying major trauma that you can see coming from a hundred miles off in season 1:

from 2x09:

> DEAN  
> I’m tired, Sam. I’m tired of this job, this life … this weight on my shoulders, man. I’m tired of it. 
> 
> […]
> 
> DEAN  
> I just think we should take a break from all this. Why do we gotta get stuck with all the responsibility, you know? Why can’t we live life a little bit? 

Or this speech from 2x20 I contractually have to quote at least once a month as a card-carrying Dean!girl:

> DEAN   
> All of them. Everyone that you saved, everyone Sammy and I saved. They’re all dead. And there’s this woman, that’s haunting me. I don’t know why. I don’t know what the connection is, not yet anyway. It’s like my old life is, is coming after me or something. Like it like it doesn’t want me to be happy. Course I know what you’d say. Well, not the you that played softball but… “So go hunt the Djinn. He put you here, it can put you back. Your happiness for all those people’s lives, no contest. Right?” But why? Why is it my job to save these people? Why do I have to be some kind of hero? What about us, huh? What, Mom’s not supposed to live her life, Sammy’s not supposed to get married? Why do we have to sacrifice everything, Dad? It’s… Yeah… 

(And, side note, it really annoys me when people make 2x20 about brotherly wuv, platonically or not, because THAT is why Dean decided to go un-wish this life, not because of anything to do with AU Sam, who he still trusted he could find his Sam in >.> I’ll just keep repeating this until I stop stumbling over the idea… :P)

He’s had similar smaller moments like this but season 2, 7 and now 13 are his grief seasons, so I’m most interested in these parallels. Like, just in general. Specifically in season 2 because he was dealing with John’s order to save Sam or kill him, which of course is a dynamic that Jack could horrifyingly repeat for him if Dean gets attached to a kid with the same horrifying destiny. Specifically in season 7 Dean was dealing with losing Cas and it immediately struck him to the core, that even while Cas was still Godstiel he was having mirrors with his season 2 self after losing John:

> DEAN  
> Sounds good. You got any leads on where the demon is? Making heads or tails of any of Dad’s research? Because I sure ain’t. But you know, if we do finally find it - oh. No, wait, like you said. The Colt’s gone. But I’m sure you’ve figured out another way to kill it. We’ve got nothing, Sam. Nothing, okay? So you know the only thing I can do? Is I can work on the car. 

[… five years elapse]

> SAM:   
> So, what? Try to talk to him again?
> 
> DEAN:   
> Sam.
> 
> SAM:   
> Dean, all we can do is talk to the guy.
> 
> DEAN:   
> He’s not a guy. He’s God. And he’s pissed. And when God gets righteous, you get the hell out of the way; haven’t you read the Bible?
> 
> SAM:   
> I guess…
> 
> DEAN:   
> Cas is never coming back. He’s lied to us, he used us, he cracked your gourd like it was nothing. No more talk; we have spent enough on him.
> 
> SAM:   
> Okay.
> 
> DEAN:   
> Hand me that socket wrench.

Dean didn’t lose the car this time, just had Miriam deface it with “Bitch” on the window and the car was washed and shiny in a couple of episodes. But it’s metaphorically a similar process and I guess all they had time for when 13x01 was about taking time in a very different way, by giving Dean like 10 minutes at the end of the episode all about how he was grieving Cas. 

Anyway, I think there’s a lot of thematic overlap in what it means for Dean right now, with Billie’s reminder of his position on the cosmic ladder, to John’s order about Sam, to Dean’s responsibility to deal with Cas and the Leviathans, which eventually crystallises into his mission to kill Dick - and though Dick kills Bobby, finding out who is the head leviathan in 7x09 really just seals the deal of who Dean needs to personally kill to deal with everything, and the Bobby thing was just an extra motivation to fall into a revenge mindset, but it also about what happened with Cas (and when Cas comes back, he has to help kill Dick for the same reason it all happened to him and he was connected to it and responsible). 

We really haven’t seen anything yet, but I think getting Cas back is a temporary fix at least to a bigger issue, which is Dean’s burden of the world, which Chuck lumped on him in 11x23 and made me very, very excited that Dean’s duty to save everyone was hopefully going to get some microscopic treatment and maybe one day some sort of resolution. I don’t think Billie’s comment was a pick me up, and it reminds me of how Cas started picking on Dean on Heaven’s behalf in 4x01 - telling him they had work for him. In 4x02 Dean complains a lot about how he hates being singled out and it’s absolutely horrifying that he was saved for unknown reasons. And those reasons turned out to be being Michael’s vessel and one of the 2 grenade pins needed to be pulled on the planet being destroyed.

(Which we have some handy visuals for and reminders of in the AU world right now :P) 

I’d hope in the long run Chuck’s orders end up being destroyed as much as John’s were, because the parallel is 1 to 1 except bigger scale, and Chuck telling Dean the world has him to protect it literally in God’s own place is an absolutely horrifying unfair burden than broke him in season 5 and can be directly equated to how season 2 broke him when Sam, who was basically his whole world at the time, was lumped on him with the same burden. In the mean time, Billie’s adding to the weight on Dean, although long run she’s neutral, commenting on it rather than ordering, and seems to have some confidence that he has a purpose and will fulfil it, I can see Dean struggling with it in just the same way he took Cas’s comments in 4x01. 

So even if he seems happy to get Cas back, the root problem of his depression, his sense of being worthless, is still truly about how he defines himself as a hunter and the guy who is supposed to save everyone - who will trade himself for a house of random ghosts he feels he LET DOWN by not investigating well enough sooner. Because he has sole responsibility to fix the planet.

The job is killing Dean literally and metaphorically, and the grief of losing all his loved ones as they do it is just an additional awful, awful part of it. Not getting Cas back immediately thanks to Chuck in 13x01 just confirmed how alone Dean is in the world to him, and he directly mentioned the line from 11x23 when reaching out to Chuck… Getting Cas back and Cas returning seemingly on his own steam is going to be a nice turning point, and good for uplifting Dean, but the core problem remains and since 11x23 I’ve been pretty certain that Dean’s endgame is NOT to be a hunter… Billie also now makes me think he has some purpose to fulfil, and ideally, fulfilling it would let him finally get off the cosmic ladder and be who he wants to be without obligation. 

About all I can really speculate about that hopeful endgame would be that Sam seems to be lumped in with Dean on this, but Cas is literally outside the system based on how he got himself back from the Empty without Chuck’s interference, OR except for in thematic “rewards” or dramatic irony from just missing him really hard, Dean didn’t actually bring him back by DOING anything, and Jack, who is also outside the system in some ways, did instead. But that’s all a huge mess right now :P Need more data. 

So anyway, to go back to Dean and Cas next episode? I think they will have a lot to talk about but it has to be immediate character stuff about their actions and desires. They are both really good for each other and going through very similar emotional territory so I hope they get honest and tell each other how they’re doing, but I don’t think they’ll be talking about overcoming anything. I think if it does mirror 8x08 it MAY be a reversal that Dean admits how bad he was doing without Cas, and Cas is still too uncertain about what happened to him or with a link to make it directly about Dean to reciprocate the sentiment… For all the good communication lately I’m not entirely sure if Dean and Cas can absolutely knock down all the walls. 

And I seriously fear dramatic interruptions to their reconciliation just because of the extremely vague episode descriptions we have after 13x06, which seem to  be concealing exactly what happens in that episode… I’m really expecting silly cowboys for like the middle half of the episode, with the first quarter for reconciliation and getting onto the job, and the last quarter or five minutes for shit to completely hit the fan in some way, probably about Jack, and probably involving Cas since he’s specifically not mentioned in the episode descriptions *even though they just got him back*. 

I’m not worried or wanky about this, I’m just bracing myself for the next round of drama and what its subject will be. If Cas is fine and hanging out with the Winchesters still for 2 episodes and it was redacted spoilers for the sake of 13x05′s last 5 minutes that’s awesome :P But it sounds like time to brace yourself not to expect everything to be fluffy or resolved, either with plot stuff, or emotional arcs. We’re only 5 episodes in so the drama needs to keep on happening, and there’s no way Dean and Cas can or should overcome their arcs about their depression when it’s been set up so interestingly, just because they’re hanging out again.

But it WILL make them feel a lot better in the short term. :D I’m really excited for what they WILL say to each other, I just feel like in some ways we’re really starting to put the cart before the horse on identifying what stories are being told and what moments are being offered to tell them, and assuming the stories are over just because something really dramatic happened. I’m seeing it a lot with all sorts of thematic threads, that just because they’re becoming obvious or surface level or have had a really dramatic moment all about them, they’re being wrapped up as we speak. Instead I think it’s got to all be set up for the rest of the season, where this is all important stuff to know, but the real work hasn’t even begun yet :P


	15. 13x03 - 13x07: Convenient Phone Answering 101

I’m just trying to write fanfic over here but kinda got back to my “LOL James answered the phone immediately because he’s low key psychic” reading via writing about Patience and him, and suddenly realised that this is not the only time we’ve seen this level of “hey I was right by the phone waiting for you to call” this season, and I am nothing if not determined to unpack this gosh darned longing retcon. 

I have an awful headache when I stretch my brain today though so let’s go gentle, because I nearly wiped myself out wrapping Christmas presents, if you want a measure of my fortitude :P 

Here’s the text from 10x10 when Cas got the lines confirming it on screen:

> CLAIRE  
> How the hell did you find me?
> 
> CASTIEL  
> Angels are able to find those who pray to them.
> 
> CLAIRE  
> Pray? Oh believe me, I gave up praying a long time ago.
> 
> CASTIEL  
> Well, it doesn’t have to be a formal prayer. I could pick up on a – a longing… Perhaps you wanted to tell me something?

This “retcon” is basically about  _communication_  and a desire to talk.

(I kinda think it has always been a way the show handle this, when you go back, and Buckleming just put it into text pretty much at random, since Claire never had angel warding so Cas would have been able to locate her perfectly well…)

13x07 is far more blatant and uses Cas, and Dean who has previously and blatantly had this link used. But as I said to [@mittensmorgul](https://tmblr.co/mH08bFF21ewTCayiwIXZEOg) when having revelations at her, finding another platonic example (Claire, of course, being the first time the show ever actually discusses the idea - she prayed to Cas every night just like Dean, huh? :P) is basically like stumbling on someone giving out free cake.

It is kinda hard to read in the gifs for 13x03 so if you wanna get into this one I’d encourage you to go rewatch because it’s all in the sound effects… In fact I’m having so much brain blech about this let’s just go with the old C&P method from when it made sense the first time:

> elizabethrobertajones  
> I’m gonna prove the longing retcon with blood sweat and tears : P
> 
> mittensmorgul  
> they certainly do seem to use it to their advantage, even if it’s not 100% obvious on the surface
> 
> elizabethrobertajones  
> yeah
> 
> mittensmorgul  
> There’s so much that only really makes sense because of it
> 
> elizabethrobertajones  
> it’s blatantly a mechanic used in telling the story
> 
> mittensmorgul  
> yeah, and it could very well be that it’s not a retcon at all.
> 
> elizabethrobertajones  
> yeah
> 
> mittensmorgul  
> Like, it could’ve been in their show bible for years, and bucklemming only made it textual
> 
> elizabethrobertajones  
> I sort of feel like Buckleming just described something out of the lore library the show has
> 
> there’s other cases like in some episode with hexbags  
> where the lore on the screen where they were researching it was literally just the description the show would use for the writers  
> it looked like someone C&P’d from the show lore bible :P  
> like what colour it was meant to burn etc
> 
> […]
> 
> elizabethrobertajones  
> I just re-watched the bit in 13x03 to make sure I’m not making it up and the sound effect and the lack of ringing before the transition (idk what that sound thing is called) really implies that it started ringing when the phone was only in his hand  
> idk if I can convey it in a gif but I WILL and just say if you don’t believe me go listen  
> what the heck is that thing called where the sound overlaps, which if they’d done the ringing in Missouri’s side would have implied it different to the new scene and then the ringing?
> 
> elizabethrobertajones  
> I watched a whole video on stuff like this because of [floralmotif’s reference post ](https://floralmotif.tumblr.com/post/159219473637/hi-i-just-went-to-see-beauty-and-the-beast-again);P
> 
> […]
> 
> elizabethrobertajones  
> [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OAH0MoAv2CI&feature=youtu.be&t=7m25s](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DOAH0MoAv2CI%26feature%3Dyoutu.be%26t%3D7m25s&t=MTc4MjA4ODkwMzAyY2MzNWY4ZDgyMmE1N2EyMDA4ZTQwZGY0MDQ5OCxrM3pjaDZmdQ%3D%3D&b=t%3AEoTmUHpiEEiE91JGAXVv3Q&p=https%3A%2F%2Felizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F168758631228%2F13x03-13x07-convenient-phone-answering-101-im&m=1)  
> there’s some stuff about it here  
> aha it’s called a “j cut” when the audio from the next scene starts before you get there
> 
> elizabethrobertajones  
> I think if they’d done that it would imply that she was already ringing and even if it rings once for not being boring, it’s like “Here she’s phoning him, here he is answering it”
> 
> elizabethrobertajones  
> and if the ringing only starts when we’re WITH him, it seems like he just happened to have the phone in his hand the moment she dials him and the TV style “only ring once” thing when you’re playing with PSYCHIC characters…
> 
> there’s another layer at work :P
> 
> mittensmorgul  
> I mean they could’ve shown her dialing instead, and him just picking up the phone without showing the ring on his end, and it would’ve achieved the same implication that she’d called him
> 
> but with less of the “he somehow ~knew~ she was GOING to call him” attached
> 
> elizabethrobertajones  
> there’s 1 ring on screen after we cut to him and he already has the phone in his hand
> 
> mittensmorgul  
> so that was definitely an editing choice there
> 
> elizabethrobertajones  
> immediately after she deliberates for a long time about phoning him  
> considering the rules of the longing retcon are a longing to communicate
> 
> elizabethrobertajones  
> it’s textbook
> 
> mittensmorgul  
> yep  
> Because if SHE dialed and we heard the ringing from HER end while she waited for him to pick up, there’s no “longing” involved.  
> Even if we cut to him with the phone already pressed to his ear answering it  
> but the other way around, the way they edited it, I think they know what they’re doing :P

Basically I feel like because I picked up on this as a possible nod to James having mild psychic powers of his own (and as a first meeting of the character, why not, AND later he does use a spell to locate Patience, implying he has at least some skill even if he chooses not to use it) it does seem to imply he knew he had to pick up the phone. 

The previous moment shows Missouri staring at James in her contacts, deciding if she would or would not phone him, and we KNOW she has powerful psychic ability and deliberately reached out to Patience shortly after. She could easily be beaming the desire to communicate towards James because this is the point of those shots - that she is deciding she wants to call him, at great emotional turmoil.

It may or may not ever be a thing again but the uncanny way James picks up the phone as it seems to begin to ring on screen, already having it in his hand as we cut to him (and my gif starts with the first frame of him on screen) does feel like  _something_  happened there, as I said, given we’re dealing with a whole family of psychics. It was this shot that made me convinced all episode James had powers and wasn’t using them, so it was no surprise to me he found the spell to locate Patience and did it for them. (That and he possibly trades stocks given the work we see on his screen, which, lol. It’s that or casinos, right?)

I actually think the 13x07 phone moment is more egregious and how the HECK did Cas know to be on the other side of the room from Lucifer and ready to answer his phone when Dean reaches out to him seemingly at random on his side, and to me their connection is blatantly getting implied in the text - and my whole longing tag is dedicated to that, so I’ll stop here and link that :P

<https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/tagged/pining-not-praying> 

As I said, this parallel is free cake, not the main course.


	16. Left of screen

**Anonymous**  asked:

> Hey, you make awesome meta and for that I want to share something that I saw on 13x07 about Ketch. I saw that some people said the revelation was a (bad) plot twist but I say it was revealed at the moment Sam and Ketch were face to face. Sam was on the wrong side (facing the left wich in painting means "looking in the past") while Dean was on the right one (beating the shit outa him) and even betwen Cas and Luci. What do you think of it? Thank you for your time :) (sorry for the bad english)

* * *

Hi, and thanks! :D I love this idea.

By “even between Cas and Luci” do you mean in their scenes the same thing was used? (I think that’s less your English, which is great, and me still being tiredness-hungover and you having to shorten this to fit :P Btw in general, peeps, my submission box is open and anonymous is allowed so if you have a longer thought than fits in my ask box, I’m totally cool with submissions and answer them the exact same way!) 

But yeah, I think I’ve read about this before in various places - especially in Western art/media because we read left > right which then goes on to affect the way we read art and pictures, and specifically that we (Western culture again more than “people in general”) pick out faces first left > right, then sweep the foreground and then background left > right or some such thing about how fast our brain works. (PS: as always, take a moment to think of the students who get paid like $20 to sit hooked up to brain and eye reading machines for this sort of thing) 

I mean obviously long before that sort of probing research, we codified it culturally that this is just how things are and by instinct and/or how it was taught art generally follows this rule - I’m not an expert at ALL, I’m literally just remembering mostly internet articles and stray other general knowledge mentions of this I’ve picked up - so I can’t really explain it much deeper than you except confirming to others who haven’t heard of it that I don’t think you made this detail up and this is other stuff I think I might know about it but I’d be happy for someone like [@floralmotif](https://tmblr.co/mlFJhruyNoEmi31ZmmbClMw) to correct me or something :P  

I remember after/before 10x03 there was somewhere or other Jensen talked about filming it knowing in horror tropes you film certain ways to make characters look more threatening, and that was that demon!Dean walks through the Bunker going right from left in several instances. (Actually, and then Amara mirrors that in 11x22 but then Mary mirrors Amara in 12x09, which I think is interesting to throw in there as an example of the show starting with a generic “everyone will subconsciously register this” thing, and then mirroring itself enough times that it’s talking in its own language… Maybe or maybe not Mary registers as being somewhat unsettling in that scene in people’s hindbrains for some reason if they don’t see the reference and sort it properly, but repeating the imagery for the internal storytelling is getting more important…) 

Anyway yeah in 13x07 the directing goes a very long way, so I think it’s probably safe to say some stuff like this was considered.

I’m just skimming the confrontations now and in the open with Michael and Lucifer, and it opens with Michael bothering Lucifer from the right of the screen while finding out about God, but he moves over to confront him looking from the left to the right when talking about taking over the main SPN world, if that means anything. They only really have the one wide shot where Michael is looking at Lucifer from the right of the screen to the left, but I don’t wanna screencap it because it’s got pointlessly shirtless Lucifer in it and I already decided 3 days ago I don’t want that on my blog, so have this random close up of Michael instead :P 

This is a bit more complicated stage direction-y than I feel up to analysing right now so I’ll leave that for anyone who wants to break it down - though I think it’s the sort of scene where close reading after the end of the season makes more sense…

But we have Cas looking the “right” way in his conversation with Lucifer, and a lot of people have been squealing about how he was handling this all so much better - he was in a tense situation but he wanted to try and call Dean asap and slipped away to do it, so he was only really thinking he was trying to handle it until he could call for help, and that was taken out of his hands, literally, but not for lack of trying on his part, and that trying is super important given how his story has been going…  

  


When we have the first interrogation with Ketch it’s mostly from this sort of direction and Sam and Dean are roughly on the same side of him through it whichever way you look at it:

  
  


Then we get a lot more personal close ups as Ketch sows some doubt and it’s dividing Sam and Dean’s opinion on him (which I think is really interesting as Buckleming traditionally love these interrogation scenes where there’s a character the Winchesters hate or don’t think much of, and they become a hive mind unit teasing and interrogating them and it rarely matters which character is saying which. The dialogue is fairly generic but the directing by cutting Sam and Dean apart like paper dolls where you snip their arms and legs where they’re joined, and showing close ups of them reacting individually, lends a lot more to the idea they’re having Inner Thoughts here and building up to Sam entertaining the idea and Dean refusing to. 

I’ve been grumbling about this type of scene for ages - I was fandom new for 9x21 so things in the 9x18-9x21 range all seem really disproportionately important to me as that was all the hot new meta I read on my arrival :P - and it was nice to have directing which added in the subtlety and the fact that Sam and Dean should never be treated as a like-minded unit, even/especially when they’re presenting as a like-minded unit.

Because in the next scene, although Sam’s not looking at him, Dean’s sat behind him in such a way to put him in the right-facing seat again:

And after 2 previous scenes of slowly rotating, Sam ends up in the left-facing wrong seat while entertaining Ketch’s evil twin idea to the point of giving him a second hearing about it that convinces him to let the guy get a sandwich for his troubles:

And then we get to the scene you described, where Sam’s on the wrong siiide:

Wrong siiide

They literally cross around each other so that Sam can still be on the wrong siiiide from the next camera angle:

And though he seems to be circling him warily of course it’s Dean who makes the leap.

And then though Sam skedaddles back to the right side, the camera seems to show him hiding behind Dean, even though they’re probably standing side by side, and it’s just the camera making it look like that:

That was a fun journey :P 


	17. Lucifer fails at redemption completely

I just watched 13x13 again with my friend, and has anyone written about the homeless guy who tries to cheerfully help Lucifer as being Jesus? Like, literal Jesus? I remembered I had an anon suggesting the car washer from 13x11 looked like a Jesus-y sort of guy with the long hair and beard… 

[](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/171173418113/elizabethrobertajones-i-just-watched-13x13-again)

 [elizabethrobertajones](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/171173418113/elizabethrobertajones-i-just-watched-13x13-again)

 

[@hamburgergod](https://tmblr.co/mpod69WvKETLh_6cVotk8DA) replied to your post “I just watched 13x13 again with my friend, and has anyone written…”

> haven’t written anything about it but i was 100% convinced he was jesus until he talked about sister jo

Yeah, I’m not 100% on how THAT factors in, but I do kinda think she’s nothing but bad news for Lucifer (which is good news for us :P) with a sort of Ruby parallel going on there. And if Lucifer failed all the tests set before him, then why not shove him towards his doom? :P

I just fired off this post while moving my laptop after we watched, but here’s some sleeepy thoughts. 

Like, first of all, hamburgers = humanity in the show’s language for a long way back, but 9x23 where Dean losing his humanity was shown with him rejecting a cheeseburger is the HUGE example. And of course Lucifer sees one and goes “ew” at it. 

Then he spots Tim the Homeless Jesus Parallel sitting cheerfully around, earning charity, and goes to mimic him. Obviously his “vibe” is compassionate even before we see his face:

And he smiles the ENTIRE time like he truly is blessed not just to get people’s spare change, but to be where he is doing what he does. Meanwhile Lucifer:

And he’s seen what Tim is doing but making no effort to COPY him, and lower himself to mimicking him in any way other than having a small cup he’s reaching out. It somehow makes Tim look more open that he has a box trustingly placed on the ground while Lucifer’s waving a small cup around and just saying “Money. Give me money. Or your jacket.” while Tim is grinning at everyone, and thanking and blessing everyone who helps. 

He has nothing to offer these people except compassion but it’s enough to make them give, while Lucifer’s “vibe” obviously doesn’t work for them.

But he is watching and finds Lucifer sort of amusing, and decides to offer him advice, which is where I see him possibly being Jesus for the first time for real because of that sidelong look at him before he reaches out to start testing and guiding Lucifer.

  


I mean, he is a cheerful guy, but you can SEE him having a private smile to himself about Lucifer.

So he says, “it’s your vibe, it’s off-putting, maybe that’s why people don’t take to you,” which if you consider it like he’s Jesus talking to Lucifer, is kind of hilarious

Lucifer complains it’s not him and he doesn’t need FOOD, or any of that crap, and Tim laughs to himself as he turns away.

“Being human SUCKS” Lucifer complains.

Tim laughs, “Yeah, fair. What’s the alternative?” Again, if we think he’s testing Lucifer, it’s asking him to consider what he had and if his power really ever brought him contentment or if this path is one he might consider if there was no alternative. 

“Don’t even get me started,” Lucifer says, still hung up on being an archangel.

So Tim shakes his head, and closes up shop, and shows Lucifer more human compassion, once again a test as the example human for Lucifer to bounce off of, offering him food because despite the terrible conversation, he is kind and will try and guide Lucifer to use the resources they have and show him that even if the way seems to suck, it’s a way to live.

Metatron ended up human and dumpster diving, and had the compassion to feed a small dog (and don’t get me started on the dogs as the representative of the divine thing on this show) and as soon as he demonstrated basic human compassion, God whisked him away for emotional closure. It was a success for Metatron’s arc, the moment he was demonstrably close to redemption and clearly changed.

Lucifer in the same situation with a kind human trying his hardest to help him and guide him, refuses to engage with the offered help, though Tim/Jesus is trying to feed the hungry, which is of course a thing he once did. Getting 100s of meals out of what should have been nothing… I grumbled in my notes for this episode about dumpster diving and waste in the way society throws out perfectly good food and that it made no sense that this wouldn’t be fresh and edible but in any case, Tim knows it’s still good even if the show added fly sound effects to the box, and Lucifer refuses to eat the food that Tim has conjured out of what to society is seen as nothing… 

“Corelli’s lasagne KILLS. Frankly, it’s better the next day.” Honestly once I had this theory in my head I laughed to myself a lot because of the idea of this dumpster being representative of the cave and the food being Jesus himself, being “resurrected” better the next (couple of) day(s).

Lucifer refuses this endorsement once more deigning to lower himself even in desperation, asking a hungry, crippled homeless man to use his money to buy food in the restaurant for him. At which point Tim turns him on to Sister Jo, and hopefully to his potential ruin…

ETA: I forgot also of course this “conflict” has been set up already this season


	18. 13x15 random grumblings

 

I re-watched this episode for the first time the other day and remembered there was a meta point I was interested in that I haven’t seen any real commentary on. 

I’ve written a lot in the past about breaking glass as the walls between worlds, which is blatantly obvious in season 6, its title card, and especially 6x15 where it’s literal.

I love the shot here where the skull is reflected in the glass, and we see a mirror of it - a thing that looks like a thing, but is trapped in the glass. To me the thief becomes a metaphor for the spell TFW want to enact, which of course I am still dubious about when it comes to consequences, though obviously they are working against both dramatic irony where we have more info to warn them off of it, and earnest desperation to save their loved ones so it’s not like I’m super judging them hard, though their individual motivations all bring up different aspects of their characterisation and respective character arcs for the season.

In any case the thief here breaks between worlds and smashes the glass, but not before he offers up an apology to God. He will be one of the victims killed in the episode in the crossfire of the ownership struggle for the skull, and I’m still not sure if there was some message of divine retribution or not, but I believe in a higher order in their universe - Billie and her thoughts on consequences and the poetry of the universe. 

The “sorry, mother,” line where he knocks out a nun in order to escape also gives us a second moment of asking for forgiveness for his actions, and in this case, the mirror of the skull - TFW’s mission to smash between dimensions to get what they want - also involves a mother trapped there too. I’m not sure I’d say foreshadowing because I’m never super confident about these things, nor invested in the outcomes or being right (and wouldn’t want to be if Mary gets hurt in the crossfire) but in any case mentions of “mother” on this show always seem to be significant. 

In this case it makes me read the skull almost as Jack - the chaos around him a struggle more for his powers than something his powers create themselves. The danger something inherent in him simply for being important and valuable. 

Perhaps the end of the season will bear out that the major players in this episode can be lined up to the events of the season… I’m currently dubious how I would ever assign them because I wasn’t really sold on any metaphorical connections in the episode, though doughnut guy was eating aka Lucifer is eating grace right now, and he had a big star or sun symbol behind his desk. Considering he survived the episode, though captured, I also wearily don’t want to apply any thoughts of foreshadowing to him if that means thinking Lucifer makes it through another year :P


	19. 9x06/13x03

Kind of a throwback to last week but I just remembered I made this connection immediately and just commented on it in my notes and never followed up.

These episodes had a lot of superficial similarity, though of course on pretty much all the points 13x03 subverted or did something differently, even if callbacks were around.

Obviously the most clear one, structurally, is the Sam & Kevin-Crowley side arc with Jack, and the way Sam is split off from Dean and spends the entire episode in the Bunker dealing with characters Dean’s flounced out on because of horrendous bad feelings about Cas which have nothing to do with said characters but are destroying Dean’s ability to sit still in the Bunker and play along.

In 9x06 Kevin and Sam are basically just on a team, when it comes to reasearch and the angel fall spell - but when they take Kevin’s translations to Crowley because Kevin has reached a point where his powers are ineffective and he can’t get past that wall, Crowley wants blood from Kevin and he and Sam argue about if Kevin should be expected to give up even more to Crowley. Of course Kevin was on a downward descent in story terms, coming to the end of his run and by this point now useless to the plot and announcing he translated the whole angel tablet, can’t read it, but moving the ability to read it over to Crowley *and literally any angel who finds those translations just lyyyying around in the Bunker* means if they ever needed something from it again they weren’t reliant on Kevin. Jack is on an upwards arc in terms the story needing him because he’s only just beginning to be explored as a character and given his personality, and he’s learning his powers to begin to understand them for later use in the story - and powers only he as a character can use, even if others might manipulate him for them. (Poor old Kevin - at least Jack’s far less vulnerable than Kevin basically getting gifted Cosmic Nerd powers. Jack is a Cosmic Jock. I have to end this comparison.)

And yeah, Dean’s off out somewhere, dealing with stuff, or not. In 9x06 he struggles to deal with Cas, being friendly and trying to make him feel better, respecting his wishes to be boring after nudging him into helping on a case doesn’t work out, and even driving him to his date. And of course, rushing off and saving him. After the bit in the gif above, he has another conversation with Cas where he can’t apologise properly, can’t explain, and gives Cas a rubbish pep talk (see also: Patience getting one of the patented terrible “In this life” speeches from Dean) before leaving him at the Gas n Sip again because he couldn’t reconcile Cas with what was going on with “Zeke” and have him back. But before he loses Cas again, and this time seeming to get sad mournful closure that he might have to not see him for a long time, Dean has the call with Sam, where we don’t hear all the chat, but Sam is sitting alone in the dark in the Bunker and asks Dean if he’s going to tell Cas about the angel fall spell being irreversible.

Of course that came up as one of Cas’s “failures” in the 13x04 “here’s your shitty life” montage the Empty showed Cas :P

Anyway in that scene oodles of stuff has been written about how Dean can’t tell Cas because the 5x15 “he’s my husband, my job is to bring peace, not pain” parallel (I have that MEMORISED because of this friggin episode :P) and he chooses not to make Cas feel even worse about the whole thing - not to pile onto his failures but to take that one away with him for now. At least while Cas is out of the game. But really there’s a lot of empty space in this episode. Sam asks, and we cut to Cas and Nora. Then Cas joins Dean, all we see is Dean not telling Cas, hanging up on Sam so to cut off this communication, and he asks Cas “where to?” and of course Cas doesn’t answer either, just sadly looks at him and gets in the car. It’s all desperately unspoken.

In the end of 13x03 the confrontation with Sam is far more aggressive, and about Jack, but exposing everything they feel about him in hyperbole argument language. Of course it’s less extreme than that on both fronts. But anyway, the point is, not only does this argument clarify for us that it’s Cas that Dean is most upset about and put out the proposition of the different ways Sam and Dean are handling the grief, but while 9x06 was about Dean having to shelve Cas for a while, and let him go in miscommunication and lies and guilt, now in 13x03 Dean being clear about how much Cas means to him is the inciting comment that leads to Jack reaching out for Cas. I can read that whichever ways about WHY he did it, but visually just like in 13x04 where Dean says he’s got nothing to believe in and we cut to Cas over in the field, being the only thing Dean DOES believe in, Dean’s comment goes to Jack reaching out to Cas, to Cas waking up. Visually in a cause and effect way it’s linked. So instead in this ending rather than push Cas away, it’s the first thread to draw him back in.

… There’s probably a bunch of other stuff I could say but I’d have to rewatch some stuff so I’ll stop here :P


	20. Who are you, Castiel?

I woke up with this parallel rather painfully etched into my heart, and I feel like I have to talk some more about Cas and what he is being asked right now. Back in season 9 there was a strong challenge to Cas’s identity in pretty much every episode he was in, asking him what he wanted to be and who he was. At the end of season 9, though he had some sort of grace back and was doing his best for the angels, he was about to be undermined in the narrative by Metatron’s reveal that he was doing it all for one human (which, incidentally, makes it Metatron’s fault by and large when trying to discuss human!Cas and the inevitable way shipping is dragged into discussing his season 9 & 10 arcs as his identity WAS in the story so firmly wrapped around Dean…)

I remember the conversation with Josiah giving me utter chills on first watching and even going back now 4 years later to borrow some gifs from it, the scene floors me. This is a wildly underrated performance from a guy dressed up as a sort of gooey Darth Maul effect and it’s one of the most intense Cas exchanges in the show, though he spends most of it in silent, horrified shock. Coming at the end of the season, it was a sort of more spontaneous calling out than the scripted douchey message Metatron sends him at the end of the episode, yet challenging him the same thing, that the angels see his loyalty as not really to them, and even doubt who and what he is. This moment gets to the core of it all in a way which truly shakes Cas.

4 years later, Cas confronts a version of himself who is part of an angel army, this one brainwashed and damaged into a twisted version of himself whose “too much heart” has been stamped down, and he has been turned unrecognisable by years of inflicting torture on humans. This worst version of Castiel creates a similar but even more pointed demonstration of what Heaven is and wants, and how our Cas compares to him, where the differences and similarities are.

Once again, Cas confronts this concept of obedience to Heaven, and the toxicity of being an angel; in season 9 and 10, the stolen grace was the very concept of being an angel and duty burning him out from the inside, both taking the grace to save Sam and Dean, but also keeping it to continue to try and sort Heaven out. It was saying, the very nature of what you do is toxic. Now in season 13, 13x14’s Dontatello thing and this show that Cas’s ruthless nature towards obtaining information - shown throughout the series - is the reason AU Heaven prized him so much. He is shown torturing for info in the same manner in parallel to his AU self, but under the different (yet still chilling and miserable) conditions that he is with Dean.[ I wrote a lot about that here the other day, so this is a sort of continuation of that thought.](https://elizabethrobertajones.tumblr.com/post/173902688578/the-13x22-scene-where-cas-tortures-that-guy-while)

Obviously these two moments aren’t telling us the exact same thing, approaching it from different angles, and with very different versions of Cas. Cas from season 9 onward is a very different character - the Cas in 8x23 and the Cas in 9x09 for example are as far apart as if seasons of development had occurred to them and the human!Cas arc served in a lot of ways to alter Cas to a different character to be written from that point on. Cas continues to change on from this point, following strong and constant character development, sometimes for the worse, and sometimes for the better. 4 years later, season 13 Cas is what I’ve been only half-jokingly describing as “party!Cas” after 13x19 gave me the vocabulary to express how I found Cas different since the Empty and where his humanity arc had led him overall - much more confident, self-assured in some ways, and though he is still damaged and miserable in many ways, he has a bit of the old snark back, but now very much applied in different directions.   
Part of Cas’s rapid development has been challenging him over and over to who and what he is, which gives him a vocabulary to define himself as well, just as I found a word for what Cas was like now after he snarked about Sam n Dean never going to parties, and the Empty confronting Cas at the beginning of the season gave Cas some ways to define himself which push back against the entropy and depression he had fallen into from season 11-12 and to gain back some spark. In this case at the end of the season, the challenge is a much more fundamental one, about Cas’s loyalties, and personality. Cas being able to voice something like his preference for humans over angels is a very important moment for him.

I’d like to examine these moments side by side, because as much as they have their differences, they follow similar beats, and I find that quite fascinating. All I’ve changed when giffing is to cut out a Sam reaction between the first 2 gifs in 9x22, so all of Cas’s reactions are included.

In the first pair, 9x22, Cas is given the ultimatum: Josiah knows there’s something fundamentally awful and un-angelic about Cas, and he considers being healed by him to be some form of blasphemy. This is the turn around on him seeming to be a sympathetically sad burned angel that Cas can help, to revealing that he’s been turned against Cas. We’re left to wonder if this is Metatron’s Cas-hating influence, but his hatred stemmed mostly from jealousy and a sense of inadequacy, when you look at the wider picture. When Josiah rejects being healed, it’s a wham moment that something is much more wrong than we suspected, even for a scene which is very very wrong and designed to make Cas feel off-balanced and horrible and mocked. Even within that, Josiah is here judging Cas not for Metatron’s benefit, but for his own sense of honour. And as a rando angel from Cas’s army, which is soon to desert him, he has to speak for all their anxieties and how at the moment the generic view of Heaven is cast on Cas.

In 13x22, Worst!Castiel changes the subject on a scene change from commenting on the wow 2 of us thing, to analysing Cas on the spot, seeing that he’s with the human resistance, and that’s enough to tell him all he needs to know about his alternate self. Like Josiah, he is mauled, inwardly rather than outwardly. But it was the eye - milky and damaged from the endless reprogramming Worst!Cas would have had to endure to become this thing - that actually got me onto this parallel, remembering Josiah’s holy fire-damaged eyes, that despite everything, could see right into Cas. Worst!Castiel seems to be able to do the same thing. Spitting out the word “humans” like a curse word to Cas is a guaranteed way to show you’re on the wrong side and that Cas, mr “loves humanity”, lives his best life where this is not an accusation but what he fights for. This is the sign that Worst!Cas is damaged beyond repair, because even before Cas had truly bonded with Dean he was saying humanity were works of art. But for the sake of this parallel, it’s also our way in; the accusation that Cas is aligned with humanity is the ultimatum of what Cas IS now.

In the 2nd pair, we have an elaboration on the ultimatum: 9x22, Josiah equates Cas’s behaviour since 9x14 as something akin to performing!Dean, but Cas playing at being an angel. He will end this season saying, “I just want to be an angel” which is a lowest point of hopelessness and lack of direction, which is where season 10 picks up, to wring him through empty duty when Heaven doesn’t even know what it’s doing any more, until it trickles out and Hannah, who is now the de facto voice of Heaven in the narrative, has no clue what they’re doing anymore either. The elaboration here is Josiah’s observations of Cas’s attempts to get them home, the work we’ve seen him do so far. Cas has resisted being recruited by the angels on any side for the whole season, trying to be independent or to be with Sam and Dean, insisting he’s not a leader, but in the end he’s forced to take the mantle, and Josiah shows how easy it is to see through it. At the end of this episode Hannah challenges Cas if it’s Dean or them, and Dean easily wins out, and Cas is forced to finish his mission independent of Heaven, achieving personal ruin in the process.

13x22, Cas is in a better place, a stronger place and has learned so much and been allowed to stand for himself, to be at least somewhat firmly invited into the family, etc, and to have come out the other side of the Empty, to have been disowned by Heaven in 10x17 and rejected them or been rejected by them over and over and over since then, that he can look at this wreck of an AU!Castiel he’s got in front of him, see what Heaven and the angels have done to him, the effect that they have caused to him, and to declare, firmly, confidently, that he prefers humans to angels; something implicit for a very long time, but left unstated. In 10x01 when Hannah challenges him if he understands what Daniel is talking about with staying on Earth, he looks almost pleadingly at her, like, yes, I understand, but please don’t make me say it. Please don’t make me face this conflict. Through everything since then, from epic fights for the universe’s survival to adopting Claire, he’s been able to align himself with humanity and he is confident to reject to this version of himself’s face that it doesn’t HURT to be told he is not a proper angel. The accusations that were once horrifying for Cas in 9x22 are now things he can boldly declare.

In the 3rd set of gifs, the judgement: Josiah says the words that chill me to the bone. Cas’s path has taken him so far from being an angel that he is now unrecognisable to this generic angel. Josiah is a stand-in for all the remaining angels. All of them from now on will represent the sort of business casual angels I refer to as “watercooler angels” because they look like they just do data entry and gossip about Cas and the Winchesters at work. Like poor Ambriel. It makes Cas stand out even more, to be one of the last standing true warriors of Heaven. But that’s a very very superficial look at this. This is about what Cas IS and what he is defined as deep deep down inside. His journey will see him disowned by Heaven and now he declares he prefers humans anyway. This is a definition he still hasn’t addressed. That though Josiah identifies it in Cas all the way back in season 9, Cas still hasn’t been able to define himself as “not an angel” and many of his issues stem from this. In 12x19 he wanted to fall on the sword and try and kill Kelly so that Sam and Dean didn’t have to, because he valued himself as lesser just because of his species and that he was meant to do this sort of thing; that angels would get the job done without compassion, just as he had once accompanied a mission to kill a “nephilim” in 12x10. And now I can dig out my favourite gif of Cas flinching even back then. The too much heart, crack in his chassis, DIFFERENCE that Cas has ALWAYS had, that even in a universe without Dean, he may have ended up like this, but it’s clear he was one hell of a job for Naomi to mould him into the perfect angel torturer.

In 13x22 Worst!Castiel tells Cas that just because he hangs out with humans he can’t pretend to have a moral high ground. That for all their differences, they are the same. Cas torturing a few minutes ago to compare to him is meant to evoke this - that though he may do it for different reasons, Worst!Castiel represents what being an angel, what Heaven, does to Cas, even in our world (because the comparison is only ever to illuminate something about our main Cas). With Naomi returned to the playing board, the reminder of how Heaven manipulates its worker bees was already on the table, but this is a much much more direct reminder of how toxic Heaven is to Cas, even though in their world it is of course at least less awful than this one’s. The “we are the same” comment is not just about their base personalities; the truth is that it’s Cas’s basic personality of being full of love which is why he was tortured into this thing in the AU. Of course they stem from the same angel. But it is the angel part which is in question here; the part of Cas that can do the thing he does with glowing eyes and a step back from compassion. Here, it is laid out: angel = heartless, human = compassion, just as in season 8 we had the heart theme where Cas had too much, and it was his love for Dean which broke the connection, etc etc we know that story :D

The 4th set of gifs: the reaction. Cas looks appalled and shaken in 9x22, left to contemplate this, and giving no answer, he only has horror, and looks away from Josiah. In 13x22 he has a sharp retort which plays into his better place and his stronger, more confident sense of self. The accusation may hurt in some ways, but Cas can use this against Worst!Castiel. If he thinks Worst!Castiel is accusing him of still having that viciousness in him, then Cas can be like, well, yeah, I would kill another version of me without hesitation if he was so awful, and basically begging for death. It leaves a lot to talk about *gestures everything I’ve written about this so far, what everyone else has written about it so far* because Cas acknowledging this is of course upsetting but also in some ways positive that he understands this, that he can read Worst!Castiel as much as he was reading Cas, and to see their similarities, but hopefully also to have confidence in his own differences. Of course this moment was not wholly positive for Cas at all, and we’re not at the end of the story so I wouldn’t expect him to have a massive moment of true overcoming and personal development, but in a season where he has confronted himself twice now, he’s definitely still, as always, moving at pace through a character arc.

And in the final pair of gifs, Josiah pretty much chooses that point in the conversation to die out of spite to Cas, vs Cas stabbing Worst!Castiel in a much more active moment of characterisation, choosing to destroy this version of himself, and that symbolism of what Worst!Castiel was, and Cas’s ability to kill it off, especially in a sequence not far from Gabriel talking to Lucifer, a Cas mirror in some ways, about the cancer of his evil - the subject of inherent goodness/badness/whateverness is on the table this season, especially as it’s all about Jack at the end of the day, and Jack is all about the members of TFW reflecting back off him for their own personal development.

I’ve also seen it commented that Worst!Cas didn’t put up a fight and quite happily let Cas kill him, and that parallel to Josiah, that it was relinquishing their pain, is also very interesting to me, as Worst!Cas shows that deep down he knows he’s a mess and he’s probably bitter that our Cas DOES have a moral high ground, that he once was what Cas is, but love has all been stamped out of him and he has nothing to live for, vs Cas who has a huge family to save now.

I don’t know if these scenes are meant to mirror each other or not, though TJW directed 13x22 and my faith in his storytelling directing is pretty much 100000% higher than every other director because I catch him at so many freakin’ tricks with messing with crypt scenes and what have you that he’s sort of in a league of his own to me when it comes to him making use of mirrors and things in the directing, which feel connected and intentional. But either way, these exchanges have a pretty uncanny side-by-side feeling to me, for all their differences, and both are crucial confrontations for Cas’s character arc and raise a hell of a lot of interesting questions for me.


	21. Are you talking about retiring?

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_“But then what would we do?”_

_[…]_

_“Are you talking about retiring?”  
_

Initially went to spite-gif this just because a lot of ding-dongs are going around like hurr blurr Destiel shippers aren’t even giffing the Hula Girls line, hurr blurr disrespecting canon for their gay ship, and then when I got here it was like, oh, right, Dean doesn’t even say it on screen, it’s over Sam’s reaction, so I can understand why you’d cut it depending on how lazy you were feeling about giffing this if you just wanted Dean’s face while doing it while focusing on how Dean was the one talking about all this. Sam’s busy psychoanalysing his brother and barely taking this all in, your know?

Anyways I guess now I read this moment as Dean saying it entirely for Sammy’s benefit, and we get the reaction shot of Sam because Dean is selling the idea to Sam, the reaction is because this is FOR Sam and this is Dean trying to get the fantasy to stick for him as well; the Hawaiian shirts comment seems more for himself as he drifts to imagine it, but the camera tells us that “Hula girls” is directed specifically at Sam. This is the sales pitch FOR him.

Like, duh Cas is included here, but he’s not present in this scene and so this conversation is Dean crafting a word picture for Sam about what would make the ideal beach vacation and he’s trying to make it sound appealing. We don’t even get Sam laughing off Dean for being gross, he grins fondly, and segues into talking about if Dean is serious about this retirement thing.

I mean for all intents and purposes this is Dean telling Sam he’s gonna hook him up with a beach babe if it kills him to do so, and I didn’t even COME here to try and defuse this and roll my eyes at how everyone immediately starts complaining Dean mentioning women is a no homo (if you’re bi it doesn’t work like that :P) but anyway now I find myself writing this when I meant to come here to post the gifs no comment, just, hey look, I, a destiel, is posting this with the hula girls line so shhh.

Anyway I can’t wait for them all to go to the beach together.


End file.
